Impact100 hopes to increase membership & charitable giving for 2022

WICHITA FALLS, Texas (KAUZ) - The News Channel 6 City Guide is a segment that shines a spotlight on local businesses, events, and nonprofits in your communities. In this episode, we’re shining a light on Impact100. It’s an organization that empowers women from all walks of life to come together and make a collective and significant difference in our community.

“Impact100 is a group of women who come together to pool their financial resources so we can work with nonprofits in the community, in programs where they can produce transformational change,” Paula Perkins, president of Impact100 said.

Perkins established Impact100 after hearing about similar collective women’s giving networks across the country. So far, the organization has been able to give two large grants to two local nonprofits. Impact100 is made up of women who each make a $1,000 donation to the nonprofit.

“The [Impact100] board started in 2018. I joined on the first year we did the grant cycle, and that was 2019-2020. We’ve had some wonderful people apply for the grants. We’ve had two grant cycles so far,” Katie Parkey, a member of Impact100 said.

The first year, 59 women equalling $59,000 came together and donated those funds to The Arc of Wichita County. The money is going to help expand the organization’s day habilitation program.

“Ever since we actually opened our day habilitation program, it’s been about four years now, we opened it with the dream of having a bigger building. Unfortunately, this was the only space we had to do that. So, when the Impact100 [grant] came in and we received the funds to do it, now we have the opportunity to expand the building help more people, get our waiting list probably completely gone, and to help people that are aging out of high school to transition into living independently, which we weren’t able to do with the small space that we have now,” Anthony Watkins, executive director of The Arc of Wichita County said.

During the pandemic, 81 women of Impact100 came out in full force and were able to give an $81,000 grant to First Step, Inc. These funds are going to help launch a program to help rehabilitate domestic violence offenders.

“The program that we’ve been trying to launch in this community for the last couple years, and we’ve actually done the research to find out what would be the best program model to use, and what the real need is for our community. We have really been, for about a year and a half, trying to really get that going in our community and talk about it to other agencies and try to figure out, ‘how can we bring this here?’ But with the Impact100 [grant] it gave us the funding we needed to launch it now,” Michelle Turnbow, executive director of First Step said.

Our very own Ashley Fitzwater has enjoyed being a member of Impact100 and now serves as the secretary. She loves serving the community with other great women from this area.

“Every woman gives that $1,000 and to me, that thousand dollars is a lot. But if I just give my $1,000 to a nonprofit in this area it’s not going to make a transformational impact. It’s not really going to change their organization. But if I can take that thousand dollars and combine it with the money, the other money that these women are pouring in, wow, what a gift! $81,000, that’s something I could never do on my own,” Fitzwater said.

Are you a woman that wants to make an impact in your community? Do you want to learn more about Impact100? You can stop by the Impact100 Membership Kickoff event on Monday, August 23rd at 7 p.m. at the Wichita Falls Regional Airport. You can also find more information on the Impact100 website or Facebook page. If you would like your business, event, or nonprofit featured on the News Channel 6 City Guide, contact us at CityGuide@KAUZ.com or (940) 757-0691.

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