Carey Sipp 12/15/205:12 PM
“We are grateful for your support,” said members of the ACEs Connection staff on a recent “all staff Zoom call”. L-R (top row) Laurie Udesky, Carey Sipp, Gail Kennedy, Lara Kain (second row) Cissy White, Rafael Maravilla, Donielle Prince, Jenna Quinn (third row) Ingrid Cockhren, (off camera) Alison Cebulla, Jane Stevens. Out that day, and grateful all the same, were Karen Clemmer, Dana Brown, Elizabeth Prewitt, Marianne Avari, and Samantha Sangenito
‘Tis the giving season, and as of mid-December ACEs Connection is at the halfway mark — $25,000 — toward our goal of raising $50,000 in donations to match the contribution of a generous funder.
“We are thrilled that our community has responded so generously to our requests for donations,” said Jane Stevens, founder and publisher of ACEs Connection. “Your gift is important because If we raise $50,000 in member donations, a generous anonymous donor will match the amount, dollar for dollar, so your gift will be doubled.”
More than 110 members of ACEs Connection have used the online giving option to make their donation. Gifts have ranged in size from $1000 to $5. As Stevens says, “No gift is too small. Our matching gift donor is looking at this as another way to build community, in addition to our ability to raise the $50,000, so I want members to know that a gift in any amount is appreciated.”
While ACEs Connection staff will be taking a break during the holiday season — our Daily Digest and Weekly Roundup will go on hiatus until Jan. 4, 2021 — our online donation option remains active.
“We want to model what a trauma-informed organization looks like by truly taking some well-deserved time off during the holiday season,” said Stevens,
“This year proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the science of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) is at the nexus of the loss of life during the pandemic, the racism driving civil unrest, and the wrenching fear, poverty and despair experienced by millions due to the economic downturn,” said Stevens.
“We have been out front during this time. Our staff has been posting reports on the ACEs, resilience, the pandemic, racism, and poverty from every corner of our nation and the world. We’ve been gathering the stories from your communities; researching and reporting the data that show how being a person of color and living in poverty — both environmental ACEs — has disproportionately affected Black, Latinx and Indigenous people,” Stevens added.
In March, ACEs Connection responded to the popular question of “When will things get back to normal?” by saying “We need a better normal.” “The normal we had wasn’t working for most people in the U.S. So, we created ‘A Better Normal’ webinar series to shine a light on the problems being surfaced by the pandemic and the death of George Floyd so that we could share solutions, expertise from our vast community of members, and hope,” said Stevens.
“We hosted more than 65 webinars over the last nine months, in addition to several more on starting and growing ACEs initiatives, the Community Resiliency Model. Of those, 27 ‘Better Normals’ focused on re-imagining education in our ‘Education Upended’ series,” said Stevens.
In addition, the ACEs Connection “community of communities” has grown during the pandemic, now totaling 348 geographic communities and some 40 interest-based communities.
“In short, it has been a demanding year. We’ve grown our membership base to almost 49,000 members, and added to our followers on YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, FaceBook and Instagram.
We’ve worked hard on reporting about policy and advocacy, science and community successes. It’s time for us to practice what we preach and take a rest, and we encourage members to take time to rest and recover from the challenges this year brought, too, if possible.” said Stevens.
ACEs Connection will share its last Weekly Update for the year Wednesday, December 16, and its last Daily Digest on Friday, December 18.
“The website will be up and monitored. It is likely that members will continue to post, and that despite time off, some staff will be compelled to post updates as well,” said Stevens. Further, “The matching grant campaign will be extended to January 31, 2021, so we will start the new year with new videos and stories on why our supporters support us.”
For those of you who would like to mail a check, here is that information:
Please make the check out to TSNE (For Third Sector New England, our fiscal partner) and on the “for line” please note “for ACEs Connection.” The address to send the check is
Christine Carreiro
ATTN: ACEs Connection
TSNE MissionWorks
89 South Street
Suite 700
Boston, MA, 02111
If you would like to post a two-to-three minute video about “Why I support ACEs Connection,” you are invited to do so. If you’d like to make a video, please use Zoom to record it, and email it to Carey Sipp at csipp@acesconnection.com, for review and posting after January 4, 2021. Please put “Why I Support” video in the subject line of the email.
Speaking on behalf of the ACEs Connection staff, Stevens said: “We wish all of you health, peace and happiness as 2020 draws to a close. We know that 2021 will be a better year.”
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To make a donation, please click here.
See “Why I support ACEs Connection” videos including those by:
Christopher Freeze
Kelly Purcell
Rebecca Lewis-Pankratz
Adriana Van Altvorst
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