Scroll to the bottom for the list of candidates for our Referral Reward YEARLY Award!

Referrals from our existing clients are our greatest source of new clients… people telling people about what they’ve found with Tom Dwyer keeps our doors open! We say “thanks” for that support through our Referral Reward Program. When a new client gives us a specific name as a referral source, we call that person and make a donation to the non-profit group of their choice. Each group also becomes eligible for Quarterly and Yearly awards of $200 and $500 and we’re pleased to announce our last quarterly award of 2017 this month. And, with 2017 in the bank, it’s time to ask your help in picking our Yearly award for 2017 as well! And so, without further ado, we’re pleased to announce our Quarterly Winner, and recipient of $200, is…

You might think the worst thing that could ever happen to a child is facing the death of a loved one through disease, accident, murder or suicide, but think of this… it’s just the start of a road they’ll be walking for the rest of their lives. The people at the Dougy Center have been thinking about that for years, and more importantly they’ve been doing something about it. From their website…

The mission of The Dougy Center is to provide support in a safe place where children, teens, young adults and their families grieving a death can share their experiences. Through our Pathways Program we provide a safe place for families facing an advanced serious illness.

The Dougy Center, the first center in the United States to provide peer support groups for grieving children, was founded in 1982. A courageous boy named Dougy Turno died of an inoperable brain tumor at the age of 13. In the two months prior to his death, he was a patient at Oregon Health Sciences University, where Beverly Chappell, at the request of Swiss psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of death, dying and bereavement, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, supported Dougy and his family during his treatment. Bev quickly observed Dougy’s ability to bond with other teens facing serious medical issues, how he intuitively knew he was dying, and how he helped other kids talk about their fears. After his death, Bev envisioned a place where children, teens, and their parents coping with the death of a family member, could share their experience with others who understood, who didn’t tell them to “get over it” or judge how they chose to grieve. The first grief support groups met in Bev’s home and has grown from that grassroots effort to become a sought after resource for children and families who are grieving. It is still the only year-round child-centered program offering peer support groups to grieving families in our community.

Today, The Dougy Center serves around 500 children and their 350 adult family members each month. Our 68 open-ended peer support groups meet every other week and are divided by age, type of death (illness, sudden death, murder, suicide) and who died (parent, sibling). Concurrent adult support groups meet at the same time for the caregiver of the child or teen who is attending group. Since our founding, The Dougy Center has served 40,000 children, teens and their families and has received national and international acclaim for our pioneering peer support model for helping children cope with the death of a family member.

We provide educational materials about children and grief and training opportunities to local and national agencies in need of our expertise. We are widely known for our groundbreaking grief support group model, and our expertise has spread nationally and internationally. Around the world, The Dougy Center’s pioneering model has been replicated through our trainings and the trainings of programs we’ve trained. We now estimate that there are over 500 organizations worldwide that are using our peer support group model and credit the Center with their founding.

The Dougy Center relies on the generosity of individuals, businesses and foundations. We receive no government funding and are supported entirely by private donations and professional training fees. We never charge families for our services.

Our congratulations to the Dougy Center for winning our final Quarterly Award this year, and our deeper congratulations for the difference they’re making in the lives of so many wounded children.

Our Referral Reward Yearly Award

With our final 2017 Quarterly Award finished, it’s time for YOU to pick our Yearly Award winner and recipient of $500!

One small caveat before voting begins…

We know you love organizations like Oregon Food Bank and Planned Parenthood because they’re all doing vital work and they seem to get at least one Referral Reward every month. HOWEVER. They’re very, very big. We give each Quarterly Winner $200 and each Yearly Winner $500, and while we’re sure these bigger groups would appreciate it (and several of these large groups have won our Quarterly and Yearly awards in the past) that money could be a much bigger boost to a smaller organization. Since we’d like to focus our giving where it would mean the most, we’ve decided to make the following groups INELIGIBLE for the Quarterly and Yearly awards, though we’ll gladly give to them through the year:

2017’s Ineligible Groups

Mercy Corps Sierra Club Oregon Food Bank Oregon Public Broadcasting

Oregon Humane Society PETA American Cancer Society

ACLU of Oregon Planned Parenthood Salvation Army American Red Cross

With the Big Guys temporarily sidelined, you still have 51 worthy (if slightly smaller) groups to choose from. Which one do YOU think should get $500? Email your choice to Charles@TomDwyer.com with “Quarterly Award” in the subject line, call the shop at 503-230-2300 and tell us your pick, or look for a voting postcard on your next visit. And thanks for your support and participation! Look for the winner in our next newsletter!