20 years of Pensacola's IMPACT 100: What has made the all-women group so impactful?

When Martha Holden’s mother suffered a stroke and landed in the hospital, she still managed – with a shaky hand – to sign her annual $1,000 membership contribution check to the IMPACT 100 Pensacola Bay Area chapter.

“She didn’t want to miss the deadline,” Holden recalled. “It was so important to her that she not let her membership lapse. She believed in this organization and looked forward to her second year. The signature she attempted on that check in the hospital, however, was the last thing she would sign, as she passed away the following day.”

The membership that Holden referenced is a key piece in the IMPACT 100 formula that has blossomed over 20 years in Pensacola. Each woman in the organization donates $1,000 annually that goes toward charitable causes in the local community. Each woman gets one vote toward funding an organization of their choosing, which entails months of application reviews, site visits, presentations, and finally, a vote.

The reasons why Holden’s mother was so captivated by the philanthropic organization are familiar to the women who have signed up to serve over the past two decades.

The empowering feeling of women coming together and systematically pulling together funds and making decisions. The connection to the community in understanding the diverse areas of need and the organizations working to address them. The hunger to do more and secure even more funding each year, so that they have a little bit more to give away the next time.

As vice president of Pensacola’s IMPACT 100 chapter, Martha Holden now shares the same exuberance as her mother when she wears her signature “IMPACT blue” blouse and shares stories around the dinner table of the people IMPACT has helped along the way – a mix of stories passed down, stories of her own, and now stories from her daughter who serves as a third-generation volunteer.

“I smile when I reflect on my family’s three generations and the women that have each grown through our Impact 100 experiences,” Holden said. “The organization offered a 70-something, a 50-something and a 20-something each the ability to learn more about the needs and the work being done to help our community, to work alongside other women in making a local difference and to empower ourselves to reach further and deeper in our individual quests.”

Taking a chance to have a great impact

Pensacola wasn’t the first city to embrace the philanthropic organization that is IMPACT 100, but now with over 60 chapters across the United States and beyond, it is the largest.

It started in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 2002, when one woman, Wendy Steele, challenged her community to rally together 100 women to donate $1,000 each to a charitable organization. When People magazine picked up the story in 2003, the idea spread around the country, striking a chord with Pensacola woman Debbie Richie, who believed there was no reason why they could not do the same thing in Pensacola. Surely they could find 100 women willing to give.

Collectively, they could have far wider reach than what they could achieve individually, and together support education, family, health, wellness, environment, recreation, arts, culture and history in their own community.

“I think about those founding board members − they took a chance,” current IMPACT 100 Pensacola President Kristin Longley said. “I celebrate those visionary women who laid the groundwork for our organization.”

However, it is safe to say those founding women likely had no idea the scale of what they had started.

“I remember turning to her, chuckling, ‘Do they know this is Pensacola?” IMPACT 100 board member Rosilan “Roz” Leahy said when hearing about IMPACT100 in its first year.

“They didn’t find 100 (women) ... they found 234,” Leahy continued.

Now, the member count is at an all-time high with 1,208 members. As membership grew, each pledging their $1,000, so did the number of organizations they were able to help. What started as just two organizations that first year, Pensacola Habitat for Humanity and South Santa Rosa Interfaith Ministries, grew year after year.

Donna Fassett, the director of ARC Gateway in 2004, had a hunch how the IMPACT 100 model could be a force to create sustainable change.

“There are incredible unmet needs in our community,” Fassett said in 2004, prior to the chapter’s first meeting. “People with an abscessed tooth who are waiting four months to see a dentist, families that are struggling to make it paycheck to paycheck, homeless families, homeless children. I think it is absolutely wonderful that a group of people would get together to try to make a difference.

"They could have a tremendous impact.”

IMPACT 100 celebrates $16 million in grants and 20 years of giving back

Over the past 20 years, the Pensacola chapter has contributed over $16 million to philanthropic work in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties through 150 grants awarded to over 100 different organizations. IMPACT crossed the $16 million mark after awarding 11 nonprofits grants of $108,364 each at the IMPACT 100 Pensacola Bay Area annual meeting on Sunday.

The more money and time given by volunteers, the more their eyes are opened to all of the needs in the community. The Pensacola chapter is unique in that it performs a site visit for every application it receives, not only the finalists, so volunteers are able to experience the lifechanging work of the nonprofits firsthand.

Not all applicants are prepared for the strenuous application process their first time around. However, the rigor is what makes the organization so exceptional.

Jenn Bear, the grant chair for the Pensacola Bay Area’s IMPACT 100 chapter, said the application process is how the organization ensures higher success rates and levels of sustainability. It also helps introduce members to the great work being done across the community.

“There are some groups who have applied for an IMPACT grant and not received it on that particular year, and yet our members, who went on a site visit to that location, they were really inspired and moved by that location and by the visit, and so many of them, we hear, go to serve on the boards for that organization, go to volunteer at those organizations, or give funds directly to them,” Longley said.

The process of going through the application process only makes the organizations stronger. When they are joyously awarded their $100,000 grant, the organizations know just what to do to meet their goal.

When Sally Bergosh, executive director of Pensacola’s Health & Hope Clinic, noticed an uptick in opioid addiction in the community, she knew she had to do something.

She turned to IMPACT 100 to secure funding to distribute the opioid overdose treatment Narcan for free and obtain training on how to safely administer it. Health & Hope was selected in 2019, and the clinic became the first distribution site of its kind in Northwest Florida.

“Health and Hope’s free Narcan distribution program is made entirely possible by a generous grant from the Pensacola Bay Area IMPACT 100,” the clinic’s website now reads.

The pandemic would add new urgency to addiction issues as more people began self-medicating, and the clinic’s ability to distribute and educate on Narcan usage would become more crucial than ever.

“We still give it away every day; it’s saving thousands of lives,” Bergosh said.

The projects the grants fund are not always glamorous, but they are essential for the organization to continue meeting needs. Funds go to the construction tools that help build affordable housing, the vehicles that animal shelter volunteers use to transport cats and dogs, and the web databases volunteers use to connect hungry people with food.

After a recipient is awarded, the story doesn’t end there. IMPACT volunteers monitor the status of the project the organizations set out to accomplish.

For many of the women, some of the best days of the year are when they see the project come full-circle and hear the testimony of their successes.

“I’ve seen it work over and over and over,” board member Leahy said. “We have earned the respect of our community … I’m proud we’ve touched so many organizations and the people they’ve touched.”

Longley says she does not see the organization slowing down any time soon.

“I think that the spirit of philanthropy is strong in our area, and certainly the greater Pensacola community has always been pretty supportive in terms of our nonprofit community. But the reality is, there’s quite a bit of need the nonprofits are trying to address. I think that we feel responsible for doing what we can to serve,” Longley said.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: IMPACT100 Pensacola Bay Area celebrates 20 years helping