May 01 2009
Car Donation Helps Boost Morale for Our Troops
Tom Fick, a former naval lieutenant and a longtime member of the Television Academy’s nonfiction peer group, put 2 and 2 together and came up with 120,000. That’s 120,000 DVDs sent each year to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and to wounded members of the armed forces rehabilitating in military hospitals.
Tom Fick, Project Hollywood Cares, with the donated car he received through Cars 4 Causes
We were amazed. He certainly proved to us what a difference an individual can make. His original brainstorm was to collect the “for your consideration” movies sent to members of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for Emmy Award viewing and to forward them to our armed forces.
Building a New Organization
Fick started Project: Hollywood Cares out of his garage, spending the first several months acquiring the permissions needed to re-distribute DVDs intended for screenings only. He was successful, with Hollywood pros at all levels responding and helping him further the cause. Since then, the motion picture and music industries have joined Project: Hollywood Cares, too. And thousands of military personnel have been able to sit back and enjoy a bit of home while far away from home. (Click here to read a news story about troops receiving Project: Hollywood Cares packages.)
Project: Hollywood Cares is an all-volunteer organization, and it is constantly on the road picking up donations, shipping them, visiting hospitals, and sometimes presenting video libraries to stateside military bases, Navy ships and military hospitals.
The young organization, a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit corporation, came to Cars 4 Causes seeking any help we could provide. A car “would be of invaluable assistance,” Fick said. In the current economic downturn, though his group is overwhelmingly successful in procuring donated items, fund-raising is tight, and they desperately needed transportation. We were pleased to be able to help with a donated car, a Honda Accord, to help keep those morale-boosting movies going to the troops.
Related posts:
