story and photos by Nancy Peevy, special to The City Wire
A sell-out crowd of more than 1,300 people came out to support the Northwest Arkansas Children’s Shelter (NWACS) at the 13th annual Starlight Gala on Saturday night at the John Q. Hammons Convention Center in Rogers.
Guests were treated to dinner, drinks, a live auction and a performance by the award-winning country singer, Reba McEntire. Greg Russell, director of marketing for NWACS, said that proceeds from the event are expected to be at least $454,000 after expenses.
The annual operating budget of the shelter is $3.4 million, of which 25% comes from the state, and the other 75% comes from the Starlight Gala, two other major fundraisers, a few grants and private donations from the community. The stated mission of the NWACS is to provide a “safe haven, high quality care and hope for the future to children who have been abandoned, abused or neglected.”
During the evening, via video, Ashlyn Allison shared her story of being placed at the shelter in December 2011, at age 15, with her sister and two brothers after surviving abuse at the hands of their step-father. Ashlyn said at the shelter, for the first time, she felt safe.
“There was hope for a better future,” she said. “It was a new thing for me.”
Today Ashlyn is in college, on the dean’s list and has plans to be a neo-natal nurse practitioner. She is also engaged to be married. Ashlyn and her fiancée, Dakota Hayes, were at the gala.
Plans for a children’s shelter began in 1991 when Judge Terry Crabtree found out that children were having to spend the night at DHS offices because there was no children’s emergency shelter in the area, Russell said. The facility opened its doors in December, 1993. Russell said the shelter served 500 children in 2014 and was at its 48-bed capacity for much of the year.
“We had to turn away 280 kids in 2014, simply because of capacity,” he said.
That trend continues in 2015 with the shelter experiencing full beds for most of January.
“Unfortunately, there are just not enough foster beds to go around,” Russell said. “We’re needed more now than ever. I mentioned that 21 years ago kids were having to spend the night in DHS offices. The sad fact is, that still occurs.”
The money raised at the gala came from sponsorships, a live auction and a special appeal by Dick Trammel, philanthropist and Arkansas Highway Commission chairman.
More than $58,000 was raised through the live auction, which consisted of a Pabst Blue Ribbon trip to a music festival in Portland, Ore.; a Hershey family getaway to Hershey Park and the Hershey museum; a Mexican villa holiday to the Mexican Pacific Riviera; Dallas Cowboys tickets; a ski resort holiday to Park City, Utah; a vacation package to a castle in France; a NASCAR experience and Razorback Game Day tickets.
Trammel appealed to the crowd in attendance to fund 500 “Days of Hope” at $100 a day for the children at the shelter. His goal was to raise $50,000 from those attending the banquet, above and beyond the sponsorships.
Russell said the event sold out a week and a half in advance due to the draw of the concert by Reba McEntire, which was underwritten by General Mills.
“Reba is just an icon of country music,” he said. “There’s just a handful of names that carry the weight that hers does, and so when we heard they had a chance to get her this year, we were just ecstatic. ... Without the support of a partner like General Mills to bring in that big of a name and to totally underwrite the expenses, we couldn’t net the amount we do from the event.”
For the past four years General Mills has brought in performers who are ambassadors for the company’s national hunger initiative, and so have an obligation to play at certain events. The Starlight Gala is one of them.
New to the Starlight Gala this year was an after party sponsored by Pepsico. Other major sponsors of the evening were Walmart, Sam’s Club, Kimberly-Clark, Hershey’s, and Don and Jo Soderquist.