Yacht club benefits local charities

The Richmond Yacht Club again reached out this year to four local charities with funds raised from events it held over three days in August.

The annual Taste of Richmond dinner and the two-day Richmond Riviera Regatta raised more than $28,000. Tha money represents more of a lifeline than a windfall for the recipient programs at a time when need is increasing faster than donations.

Checks for $7,061.01 were presented to the Bay Area Rescue Mission, the Richmond Emergency Food Pantry, Rubicon Programs and YES (Youth Enrichment Strategies) during the club’s general membership meeting Oct. 12.

The fundraising is part of a commitment the club has made to improve conditions in the city it has called home since 1932.

“We’re a couple of miles away on Macdonald Avenue, and it’s a whole world away,” said Woody Tausend, of Bay Area Rescue Mission, which serves 1,000 meals a day and has 300 people staying at its shelter.

The club’s donation to the food pantry, the primary provider of emergency food in West County, represents about 11 percent of its budget for 2010-11, volunteer Robin Giles said.

She noted that in 2007, the all-volunteer pantry had 20,000 clients; in 2010, it had 42,000 and, “at the rate we’re going this year, it will be 46,000.”

At the same time, she said, food costs have increased and funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been cut by one-third.

Rubicon will use its donation toward its needed match of federal funding earmarked for a financial opportunity center opening in the spring that will offer training and extended follow-up to allow enrollees to become financially stable and employable.

The donation to YES will allow the program to provide scholarships that will 42 families from impoverished Verde Elementary School to attend family camp in the spring. “You know how important it is to spend time out in nature,” Executive Director Eric Aaholm said. “For a lot of our folks, this is the one vacation they get all year.”

The donations are part of a “give where you live” effort by the yacht club.

“What you see tallied up in these checks is the efforts of a lot of people at the yacht club,” member Scott Gordon said. “We start with nothing, we give away all the money and we end up with nothing.”

Learn more at http://richmondrivieraregatta.com.

MORE DONATIONS: Another quartet of local nonprofit organizations will receive donations from the Northern California Cruisers Classic Car Club, which annually donates proceeds from its “Cruisin’ In The Sun” car show in June. The Pinole Youth Foundation, the Bay Area Rescue Mission, the California Autism Foundation, and the El Sobrante Boys and Girls Club were set to receive donations in a presentation at the Pinole City Council meeting Tuesday.