On September 23, Community Shares of Wisconsin will celebrate their 50th anniversary during the annual Community Change-Maker Awards event. Community Shares will recognize individuals and nonprofits that made a lasting impact on the organization in the last half century, and honor three local social and environmental justice leaders.
The Community Shares anniversary celebration event will be held exclusively online to focus on the well-being of the community. Although the organization's members looked forward to celebrating together, the current rise in COVID infections caused them to change the plans.
This year’s celebration kicks off at 5:00pm and will include highlights from the award winners and stories from the 50-year history of Community Shares.
The keynote address will be delivered by Vu Le, creator of nonprofitaf.com and co-founder of Community Centric Fundraising, a movement to make fundraising more equitable. He is a writer, speaker, and former executive director. Le will present on how philanthropy can center the needs of the community and lead to true transformation.
In honor of our 50th anniversary we’ll be honoring several individuals and organizations who have been instrumental to Community Shares’ success and those that are a guiding light to our future. This year we will be honoring:
Candace Weber—winner of the Community Shares of Wisconsin Founders Award
Candace helped to found the Madison Sustaining Fund in 1971, now known as Community Shares of Wisconsin. A social justice fundraising pioneer, Candace helped to lay the foundation for our grassroots fundraising model by helping to coordinate local fundraising drives through the collection of spare change at the cash registers of local cooperatives.
Crystel Anders—winner of the Community Shares of Wisconsin Lifetime Achievement Award
Few people have had as dynamic of an impact on Community Shares as Crystel Anders. Crystel served as Community Shares of Wisconsin’s Executive Director for close to 25 years, growing the organization from a few dozen nonprofits raising a small amount of funds annually, to a social justice fundraising powerhouse that now distributes over $1 million every year.
Dane County TimeBank, Freedom, Inc., & Urban Triage—winners of the Community Shares of Wisconsin Collaboration Award
These three organizations were leaders in local organizing of the Black Lives Matter movement in the summer of 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd. Their efforts helped to keep our local governmental system accountable and push for real systemic change locally.
The Community Change-Maker Awardees
Dani Rischall, nominated by Chrysalis—winner of the Liesl Blockstein Community Leadership Award
Dani has been the Executive Director of Chrysalis for nearly a decade but the impact of her work goes far beyond Chrysalis. Over the last ten years, Dani Rischall has transformed Chrysalis to embody its mission of transforming lives through work. Under Dani’s leadership, Chrysalis has become a leader in busting stigma around mental health, moving the IPS and Peer Specialist movement forward, and calling out the systemic racism that exists in mental health and substance use services.
Dr. Armando Ibarra, nominated by Voces de la Frontera—winner of the Sally Sunde Family Advocate Award
Armando is rooted in the community by being active in organizing efforts of the Latinx and immigrant community, serving on the board of Voces de la Frontera and active with other community groups. Armando is a founding member of Voces de la Frontera’s Essential Worker Rights Network, and has created a “space at the table” for community organizations that represent non-union workers that face the challenges of unjust immigration laws, weak labor laws, and racial discrimination. Armando thinks creatively about how to create structures that match the skills and capacity of our public educational system to the needs of the most marginalized—yet essential—workers in our state.
Timothy Muth, nominated by ACLU of Wisconsin—winner of the Linda Sundberg Civil Rights Defender Award
Having an attorney of Tim’s caliber working for the ACLU of Wisconsin pro bono has been a game changer. Without Tim’s help, the case the ACLU filed in 2017, challenging conditions at the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth prisons, would have taken much longer to file and litigate, putting more children at risk of abuse and neglect. Tim makes it possible for the ACLU to defend some of the most vulnerable citizens in our society: incarcerated children and immigrants.
Tickets purchased in support of this event help Community Shares award six nonprofits $1,000 each. The three winners of the Wisconsin Collaboration Award, and three nonprofits chosen by the Change-Maker Award winners will each receive $1,000 to further the inspiring and critical work they do in our community.
For more information and tickets visit communityshares.com or call 608-256-1066.