When I won the Rolex award in 2000, I convinced the Board to start a Capital Campaign for building a permanent facility. While we raised  significant funds, we never met our goal. Furthermore it has since been decided our resources are better off helping people, than owning a facility  and we have excellent rental space. When the banks collapsed in 2007 we had approximately $110,000 in the capital campaign. I wrote to all the donors and requested that they release that money so that we could use it for general expenses. Most donors released their donation. Those funds helped us stay operational through the entire recession.

There is however $10,411 that has never been officially released by the  donors. In part because of how long ago these funds were donated, the addresses we had on file the mail was returned. Further complicated by Hurricane Sandy and multiple computer meltdowns, we no longer even have these bad addresses. It is my belief that these funds were donated by well-intentioned people who wanted their money to go to making a substantive long-term change in society. These funds were dedicated specifically to the Pedals for Progress Capital Campaign. The residual restricted funds could languish on the books of P4P providing no value to anyone. The Board feels that this is specifically contrary to what the donors intended. Furthermore since this money was dedicated specifically for “a” Capital Campaign, it should be used for such.

Pedals for Progress, a New Jersey nonprofit corporation, is hereby posting official notice to all of the original Capital Campaign contributors. If you are one of these original donors, we no longer have your address. Please write or email P4P with your name, address, amount of your donation, and instructions on what to do with your donation. You may instruct that P4P return of the donation to you, or that the donation may be used by P4P to fund ongoing operations without restriction. If we do not hear from you, the remaining Capital Campaign monies will be donated to the Hunterdon Medical Center (HMC) Cardiopulmanary Capital Campaign three months after the posting of this notice. HMC is the local hospital that most of our employees use when necessary. The Board feels that we are fulfilling our duty to the donors by giving this money, first to a capital campaign and, secondly to something that will make a long-term substantive change that we believe remains the intent of the original Capital Campaign donors.

Sincerely,

David Schweidenback
pdls4@comcast.net