St. Andrew's Episcopal Church donates $50,000 to Neighborhood Alliance "community hub" project

Editor's note: this story was edited to correct the spelling of Gail Wassermann. ELYRIA — One generous gift led to another, as the congregation of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Elyria donated $50,000 to Neighborhood Alliance's ongoing community hub project on Wednesday. The Rev. June Hardy-Dorsey met with Neighborhood Alliance CEO and President Alicia Foss and Board of Directors Chair Kathy Valderrama to present the check. The money will go toward the capital campaign to fund a new community hub in the former Elyria YMCA building at 265 Washington Ave. Neighborhood Alliance has already built a new community kitchen and made other upgrades to the building, which closed as a YMCA location in 2006. The community hub will serve as the main offices of the Neighborhood Alliance administrative team but also centralize the nonprofit's services and provide the public with a new communal space. Hardy-Dorsey was joined by congregants Hans Van Wormer, Michelle Van Wormer and Greg Hebble, head of the church's Congregational Development Committee. The $50,000 became available when the members of the church decided to give away a portion of a generous gift the church was bequeathed by longtime parishioner Gail Wassermann, who died in 2022. The donation to Neighborhood Alliance was the largest the church has made in its nearly 200-year history. "It would've been really tempting to put it in investments because we are a small congregation and often our operating funds, we are — you know — juggling," Hardy-Dorsey said. "But our mission is sharing God's love and the idea of sharing. It didn't feel right to put it in investments if our mission is sharing." The donation was made as part of the nonprofit's Million Dollar Match drive to fund the capital improvement project at the Washington Avenue facility. During the drive, every $3 donated to the project will be matched with a $1 donation thanks to an anonymous donor. The match ends on Dec. 31 or when it reaches $1 million. St. Andrew's leadership considered multiple ideas of where to send the money, they said, but ultimately Neighborhood Alliance was an obvious recipient. Hardy-Dorsey said that St Andrew's and the nonprofit had common goals in the community and a long history of cooperation. "It really was a natural (fit)," she said. "There was lots of discussion but at the end, it came forward … that Neighborhood Alliance for a very long time has been meeting needs that we see every day." St Andrew's has served as a site for Neighborhood Alliance warming shelters for several years, its library has hosted the nonprofit's rent assistance program and congregants had put together Easter baskets for families using the shelter. Michelle Van Wormer worked to help organize the warming shelters and said she was amazed by the commitment of Neighborhood Alliance personnel. "What struck me is the passion of the people from Neighborhood Alliance," she said. "I've been involved with our feeding ministry for 30-plus years, and so have other people at our church. And that (the warming center) to me is impressive. And it means that that's something that goes to the core of those people. And I think it's important to continue to lift that up and to find ways to keep that going." In a more recent — and more unexpected — partnership, Neighborhood Alliance used several boxes of frozen ribs that St. Andrew's couldn't keep after its freezer broke. "At every turn when we were looking at who was impacting the community, it kept coming up Neighborhood Alliance," Hardy-Dorsey said. Despite that relationship, Hardy-Dorsey said that when she first heard about donating for the construction of facilities she was not on board. She said that she felt strongly that putting money into people and services was more important than brick-and-mortar projects. "I was a hard sell," Hardy-Dorsey said. "… I had to be convinced to put money into buildings because there is so much need for services." That changed when she attended a Neighborhood Alliance presentation on the project given by Foss and Danielle Locke, interim director of development and capital projects consultant. "My mind was completely switched from being kind of skeptical of it, to seeing the value of a hub," Hardy-Dorsey said. "And a place, not that everything happens within, but there needed to be a groundedness. There needed to be a safe and accessible place of groundedness." She said that she realized that to continually expand its service capacity, Neighborhood Alliance needed more space in which to grow its team. "For every service that can have a waiting list, there is a waiting list," Foss said. "Our wait lists need to go away. We don't need to have them. We need to be able to provide those services. And the only way to do that is to have the infrastructure to do it, so that's really what we're trying to create here … it's about the services that will be provided because of the space that we have to house our team and the people who are doing work." The renovation will see a complete reinvention of the former YMCA, with the old pool filled in and replaced with new office space along with a large classroom. Existing racquetball courts will also be transformed into new offices and the current front office space will become a community center. The gymnasium will remain and be restored. Any organization or individual can donate to the Neighborhood Alliance Washington Avenue Project and have their donation matched by visiting myneighborhoodalliance.org/million-dollar-match/. Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.