100+ Women Who Care Brainerd Lakes Enters Its 4th Year

The Brainerd Lakes 100+ Women Who Care group is now entering its fourth year of raising money for local nonprofit organizations. This week, the group hit a milestone, passing the $300,000 mark in total money raised to support 25 unique nonprofits.

When the group first organized, they were hoping to just get 100 women to show up and could not foresee making this big of an impact.

“The fact that we could make that big of an impact was something that we hadn’t even dreamed of,” said 100+ Women Who Care Brainerd Lakes Core Member Marcy Weaver. “So it feels wonderful to know that that’s actually the reality and that there’s is that many women that care, that truly want to do something good for the area.”

The process is simple: the women show up with $100 each, five local nonprofits are nominated at random, an elevator pitch is given about each organization, and the women vote on which one should receive the money. The top two organizations then receive the funds.

“Having an opportunity to give a windfall like this, it’s just – it’s hard to put into words, but literally within 30 minutes from the time we start quarterly to, by the time within between 5:30 and 6:00, we will change a nonprofit’s future,” added Core Member Sheila DeChantal.

The two nonprofits that were chosen this quarter were Lakes Area Heroes and the Lakes Area Food Shelf. The money was hand-delivered Friday to both organizations, who will now have $9,300 to use however they see fit.

“Nonprofits like ourselves have only been around for a few years,” said Isaiah Moengen, Lakes Area Heroes Founder and President. “The type of money that they’re bringing in is incredible for us, because we’re able to really make a huge impact in what we’re doing and allow people to continue to believe in what we’re doing.”

These women were inspired to start this group after seeing a Women Who Care group in Iowa. And now, the Brainerd Lakes group is showing people in other communities what the power of women can achieve.

“Applying for grants is a long process, and you oftentimes have to spend a lot of time trying to even figure out, are you going to apply for that grant?” explained Lakes Area Food Shelf Executive Director Tammy Larsen. “Look at it, evaluate the amount of time that you’re going to spend in order to determine, does it make sense? It’s an amazing gift to get this amount of money and not have any strings attached.”

100+ Women Who Care in the Brainerd Lakes has dates set for its 2025 meetings. Those meetings will take place on January 20th, April 21st, July 21st, and October 20th. All the meetings will be held at the Gather on 3 Event Center at The Woods in Brainerd.