By Anthony Lagunzad, HARDI Public Affairs Specialist
We’re nearly halfway to our commitment of donating the HVAC equipment and ductwork to 100 Homes For Our Troops (HFOT) builds. HFOT is the national nonprofit organization that builds and gifts specially adapted homes to post 9/11 injured veterans. As of this month, 46 HFOT builds have been connected to HARDI member donors since we made this commitment two years ago.
When we first started this program with HFOT, HARDI donors were asked to also line up a contractor partner to donate the installation labor. In the new model we have rolled out together this past year, HFOT has elected to take this requirement off of your plate as a donor, and now covers the cost of installation of donated equipment and ductwork. To donate to a build, it’s simply just providing the needed equipment and ductwork and delivering to the build site when that phase of the build rolls around.
That said, there are more builds that need donors, as well as additional ways to help HFOT and their veterans if you aren’t a wholesaler or in the vicinity of a build.
On Friday, March 29, HFOT is holding its 10th Annual Sporting Clay Shoot event near Dallas and Ft. Worth, Texas. If you are in the region and would like to attend or extend the invitation to this event to your team, you can find more information here.
Our Text2Give portal is also still active if you would like to make a direct donation (and automatically receive a donation receipt). You can access that on your phone by texting HARDI to 243–725. We hit our text donation goal of $15,000 at Annual Conference back in December through this means.
If you still want to support a specific build, you can always provide HFOT with a cash donation towards a specific veteran’s build.
Here are upcoming builds that still need a donor:
Army SPC Joey Paulk — Oceanside, CA
Army SGT Patrick Wickens — Orlando, FL
Army 1LT Marcus Rice — Batesville, MS
Army SPC Michael Monthervil — Wimauma, FL
Marine SSGT Liam Dwyer — Lake Worth, FL
Please reach out to me at alagunzad@hardinet.org if you would like to sign up to be the donor to one of these builds or another in the future. Thank you for your continued support of this initiative with Homes For Our Troops!
