BY BETH CRAFTS, 4 SEASONS REALTY, LLC
I
t’s been less than a year since The Royal Palm
Coast Realtor® Association first formed a
partnership with this year’s selected charity,
Valerie’s House. And while there are many great
nonprofit organizations that this year’s Events
Committee had to choose from, Valerie’s House’s cause to
help grieving children, its grass roots efforts, and its need
for local funding made it the committee’s selection for
2017. Since then, Founder and CEO, Angela Melvin, has
been very excited about the changes taking place at her
organization.
Tournament organized by the Young Professionals, as well
as a drive organized by YPN and the Communications and
Community Outreach Committee to encourage members
to donate needed supplies to Valerie’s House.
“We had, once again, broken the record on funding for
our golf tournament this year,” said Wade Abed, Business
Development Manager of Title & Abstract Agency of
America, Inc., and Chair of the 2017 Events Committee.
“Between sponsors, manned and unmanned holes, we had
over 170 people at the event which turned out to be a
beautiful day. The selling of tickets and the live and silent
auctions were fantastic and made a huge difference. Angela
of Valerie’s House and the children were so engaged and
her excellent talk at the luncheon was outstanding. I do
believe the Events Committee made a very good choice
this year,” he said.
“The Realtor® Association has been so instrumental in
helping Valerie’s House get the word out this year,” said
Melvin. Although the charity is just under two years old,
Melvin has seen it grow in leaps and bounds. A little more
than 100 children have already benefited from the charity’s
services. While working with RPCRA this past year, they’ve
grown by approximately 40 more children, more staff, and “The fishing tournament was really exciting,” said Melvin.
more volunteers.
“It reached a lot of people that I don’t think would have
known about Valerie’s House otherwise.”
“The videos that The Royal Palm Coast Realtor® Association
have created and have been promoting on Facebook has According to Katie Hayes, Broker Associate at James
gotten us a lot of likes and the word is spreading, we are H. Hayes Realty, Inc., and Chair of the YPN Committee,
getting so many phone calls,” said Melvin. “Every week the fishing tournament idea came to YPN when 2017
we’re getting calls from people who saw us at an event or Association President Bill Steinke challenged them to “Go
heard about us through Facebook or something else the Big” at the Leadership Retreat. “I had always thought
Realtor® Association has done for us.”
that the Association’s anglers were an untapped source
of support,” said Hayes. “So, we decided that when
Some of the events that benefited Valerie’s House our committee had its first meeting we would bring the
throughout the year include two social mixers and a golf discussion up and every single committee member was on
tournament organized by the Events Committee, a Fishing board.” Hayes said YPN knew it was imperative to make a
12 RPCRA.ORG | NOV/DEC 2017