LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - They spent weeks last summer watching a neighbor’s garage lose its paint.
It was just falling off, Marshall Ford said, like it was shedding its coat. But he and his wife, Kristin, knew the neighbor couldn’t afford to fix it.
“So I approached the homeowner and said, ’Hey, can we help you with this?’”
And then they spent even more weeks scraping and chipping and repainting their neighbor’s garage.
At some point, Ford thought about how quickly they could finish that garage with a team of volunteers. And what if there were many teams of volunteers spreading out across the city? How many homes could they paint? How many needs could they fill?
Kind of like the old Lincoln Paint-a-Thon, which brightened 783 homes over 21 years. Which drained nearly 11,000 cans of paint and drew nearly 23,000 volunteers before drying up quietly in 2012. Which had meant so much to Ford when he helped out that he had often thought about bringing it back.
As he worked on the neighbor’s garage, he decided: Now.
“That was my call to action,” he said.
He’s not starting this from scratch. The 33-year-old has an established brand — he calls it name equity — in the Lincoln Paint-a-Thon. It’s recognized and trusted by volunteers and donors.
More than that, though, he has help from the couple who started it a quarter-century ago.
The Lincoln Journal Star (https://bit.ly/21IpQaJ ) reports that in 1991, Tom and Sheila Pettigrew raised enough money and drafted enough volunteers to paint about 10 houses. They painted more the next summer, and even more the next. At its peak, the Paint-a-Thon was helping 40 homeowners a year, mostly seniors, mostly women.
But then the important numbers started to decline. They still had plenty of homeowners who wanted help, but only enough volunteers and donations to paint 19 homes in 2012, when they decided to end the effort.
“There came a time when we just said, ’Darn.’ There needs to be financing and there needs to be leadership,” Sheila Pettigrew said four years ago.
By then, though, Ford was hooked. He’d bought and painted a big home in the Near South, so he knew what he was doing. He first volunteered in 2009, and then every year until it ended. He thrived on the immediate improvement a coat of paint can make, the happiness of the homeowner.
“There’s nothing else like it to me,” he said.
They talked about trying to keep it going that first year — providing that leadership Sheila Pettigrew said it needed — but he and Kristin had just had a baby, and the timing wasn’t right.
Ford donated his time and skills volunteering at other organizations. He was doing important work, needed work, he said, but the sense of satisfaction wasn’t the same.
Last fall, he sat down with Tom Pettigrew to plot the resurrection of the Lincoln Paint-a-Thon. The Pettigrews had started similar programs in several Nebraska and Iowa cities, and still lead Omaha’s annual event, which has so far painted more than 2,500 homes there.
“He had a sample business plan, and I was able to update that,” Ford said. “I didn’t have to start over.”
They have a website, a Facebook page, a board of directors and their nonprofit — BuildUP — is close to getting its tax-exempt status, he said.
They have a date for the return of the Paint-a-Thon: Aug. 20.
But they also still have much to do. Ford is a certified project manager who works at Five Nines, so he’s been thinking about what it will take to pull this off. He figures the group will need 15 to 20 volunteers to finish one house in a day. More than that, and they’re stepping on each other. Fewer, and they’ll need two days.
So he’s been stirring up interest wherever he goes, and he’s been overwhelmed by the reaction from potential volunteers.
“It’s been inspiring, just the number of people. It’s been really great.”
He’s also thinking about money. He estimated a team of volunteers can paint a house for about $500, the cost of supplies and insurance. So far, they’ve collected enough for one house, but his goal this summer is five homes, and more the next, and more the next.
He’s not sure how big it will get. “It depends entirely on the kind of support we get.”
The lucky homeowners will choose from a handful of pre-selected paint colors — whites, blues, grays, browns. That will allow organizers to buy in bulk, and save any remaining paint for next year’s event.
“It makes project management so much easier,” he said.
With six months to go, they’re signing up volunteers and taking donations on their website. The Lincoln Community Foundation will host the contributions until the Paint-a-Thon is officially a tax-exempt nonprofit.
They’re also accepting homeowner applications. Among other requirements, applicants must be older than 65 or permanently disabled. They must own their homes, and live in them. They have to fall under certain income restrictions.
And their homes shouldn’t be so big they turn the Paint-a-Thon into a marathon.
“If you have a three-story Victorian, that’s great. But it’s probably not going to get done in a day.”
___
Information from: Lincoln Journal Star, https://www.journalstar.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.