From where I stand the third point is particularly significant, as you’d expect. Our aspiration to collect £2.25m by the autumn of 2025 hasn’t gone away; but for now joining forces against the hardships caused by unprecedented events of the last few months is more important than our Festival. After all, we have five years to gather funds for that.
At the time of writing, donations to the Covid-19 fund had exceeded £750,000 – and that’s on top of all the help already given at a local level, both financially and practically.
At the beginning of the month UGLE summarised the work of Freemasons throughout the country in providing more than 250,000 meals for people impacted by the pandemic. That figure includes the efforts of our own brethren at Louth and Sleaford working with other community groups.
That was just one example of Freemasonry in action. We’ve also seen the massive push to makes scrubs for the NHS, with Freemasons giving time and money to co-ordinate the efforts of volunteers throughout the Province; we’ve seen Lincolnshire Freemasons working together to produce much-needed face masks for front-line workers; and we’ve seen many examples of individuals helping others with simple tasks like shopping and collecting prescriptions.
Please make a Covid-19 fund donation here. You can do it by text, you can do it more than once, and it could hardly be simpler to put to good use all the money I mentioned at the beginning of this article; money you haven’t spent on raffle tickets and put into envelopes in the last three months. When you’ve made your donation, you’ll receive a texted reply giving you the opportunity to deal with the gift aid element.
If you’re read this far, firstly, thank you for doing so. Secondly remember that the Covid fund can’t take regular donations like those that still form the backbone of our Festival fundraising. A regular donation to the Festival can be made here, will help us towards our aspiration to raise £2.25m. Whatever you give through either route will make a difference to someone in difficulty AND boost our Festival total. Look at it like that, and everyone’s a winner.