PLEASE SEND YOUR TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION TO HELP LOW INCOME PEOPLE PAY FOR DENTAL CARE TO:CASDF 115 S. DIVISION ST, CARTERVILLE, IL. WE HAVE OVER 125 APPLICANTS SO YOU MAY BE HELPING A FRIEND, NEIGHBOR, A MEMBER OF YOUR CHURCH, AND PEOPLE DOWN ON THEIR LUCK WITH YOUR DONATION. PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY, YOU WILL BE BLESSED FOR DONATING.
This is a publically funded, charitable organization and depends upon donations and fundraising projects to help people. The funds stay here in Southern Illinois. Please use part of your charitable contribution for the year by helping needy people pay for dental work. The pain of toothache is horrible, been there, felt that. CREATE A SMILE DENTAL FOUNDATION NEEDS YOUR FINANCIAL HELP!!
MISSION
The mission of Create A Smile Dental Foundation is to obtain funding for dental care for people who have no dental insurance, inadequate dental insurance, and for those who do not have the funds to obtain proper dental care, essentially low income individuals, both children and adults. We help those who cannot get help from other sources. We have added dental education to our mission.
Send your tax decuctible charitable contribution today to CASDF 115 S. Division St., Carterville, Il. 62918. You may help your neighbor or one of your friends with his or her dental problems. Please give generously.
Birth of a Foundation
How did Create A Smile Dental Foundation come into being? It all began as and idea of one man, John Flora, that will be me. We were extremely poor when I was a child. We lived in a two room house( dad, mom, me and my baby brother). We lived on the old homestead, and practically lived off the land west of Tunnel Hill, in Johnson County, Illinois. We drew water from a well with bucket and rope. We used that for cooking, drinking, and bathing.
My dad did some timber work, selling stave bolts, hickory blocks, cedar and locust fence posts, and pulp wood. Most of this was done with an old crosscut saw. In the summer he would dig ginseng, goldenseal and other roots and sell them. In the winter he would trap muskrats, mink, raccoon, fox and other pelted animals until the creek froze over, then he would not trap. We lived a lot on Public Aid and commodities during that period. We heated the house with an old wood burning stove, and mom cooked on a wood burning cook stove in the kitchen. Dad would cut the wood with an axe and pile it up for the winter.
Mom washed our clothing on a washboard and I did my homework by the light of a kerocene lamp, because our electric had been shut off because we did not have the money to pay the $3.00 bill.
One Christmas Eve, I was about 7 or so, Dad had no work, and no prospect of work, and no Christmas presents for us. There was a knock on the door and some kind folks from a Kiwanis or Lions Club presented us with a couple big boxes of food and toys for me and my brother. I will never forget that and vowed at the time that when I was able I would be like those kind folks in those clubs, and give to the less fortunate.
I was a mailman in Carterville for 34+ years and I had lots of thinking time on the mail route. I thought of what I could do after I retired to make a difference in people’s lives. I recalled the toothaches I used to have, the toothaches and abscesses my son used to have and all the school he missed due to dental problems. We spend thousands of dollars on dental and he still had to have all his teeth extracted and dentures by age 21. I know the pain, agony, embarrassment, and health related factors due to “bad teeth”. We had good insurance, but still had to sell a boat to pay for his dentures, but we had the boat to sell, so many folks do not have any insurance, or a boat to sell to obtain dental care. So, the cause would be Dental for our Foundation.
With a lot of internet research, I found the path to follow to create a not for profit, charitable, tax exempt, organization. We drafted our own set of bylaws from a conglomeration of others that we found on the internet. We then applied to the State of Illinois and became a Corporation, Create A Smile Dental Foundation..
Our next step was to register with the Illinois Attorney General as a Charitable Organization. We also registered with Williamson County as a Corporation. We then applied to the Internal Revenue to become a Tax Exempt Organization. We had to pay them $500.00 to get set up and fill out paperwork by the loads. All the money for the Foundation was donated by people in the community.
It is now our duty to raise the money to help these less than fortunate folks become toothache free. Our goal is to raise $100,000.00 for this year. At least sixty thousand of that amount will go to help people with their dental problems. We have an office in our home, so the overhead is minimal, thusly more will be spent on helping people.
When we raise enough funds or some kind hearted person will rent us an office space really cheap we will move to an office. We do not need much room, just enough room for a computer desk, a few filing cabinets and a writing desk. I work on the Foundation at all hours of the day and night, so I would also need another setup like I have at home and network 2 computers together.
If anyone would like to donate accounting experience that would be great too. With everything I am involved in trying to expand the Foundation and Thrift Shops, time is at a premium for me.
At the present time(June 29, 2006) we have over 80 applicants for dental help. We are getting calls every day from folks with dental problems needing help, and we tell them we will send application and when the funds are available we will give them a call.
We do have a problem, though! The funds are not coming in to help these folks! The grants we applied for were denied, but we did get $1000.00 donations from AmerenCips, Southern Illinois Healthcare, and the Poshard Foundation, as well as $500.00 from the Ladies Auxiliary VFW in Marion Illiois, and we thank them very much. We got $200.00 from the Carterville Lions Club, $175.00 from Mr. Ken Suchy and $100.00 each from Craig Pillatsch, John Crawford, Mary and Jay Williams, Carl and Nannette Cottingham, John Rosenbarger, and Bob Browning. The rest of the donations were $50.00 or less. Most of that was used in forming the Foundation and expenses. We did help at least a dozen people with the money we had.
If you have ever had a toothache, you will know what folks are going through every day. If you have not, you are lucky! Allow me to relate to you a typical toothache. This is one tooth that hurts. The tooth has a dot of black on it, and as time goes on the dot gets bigger end bigger. Eventually, the tooth gets a hole in it and the hole gets deeper. Now its a CAVITY. Food gets in the cavity and hits the nerve. THATS WHEN THE PAIN HITS THE 10 ON A SCALE OF 1-10 WITH 1 BEING NO PAIN.
You try Anbesol and it dulls the pain, but it is still there, you take 3 tylenol or something even stronger and the pain is dulled, but it keeps coming back and coming back, so you take more pain pills, but the pain will not go away. This is just one tooth, imagine a whole mouth of teeth hurting at the same time. After a while the tooth becomes abscessed and your face swells like a balloon. Now you cannot get the tooth extracted because the novicane will not have an effect on abscesses teeth.
This is a person that is making minimum wage and has to pay bills in priority fashion. His family comes before his feelings of pain from the toothache. They need food, electric, etc, so his tooth problems are put on the back burner.
WE NEED HELP HELPING THESE PEOPLE. I DONATE MANY HOURS TO THIS FOUNDATION AND A LOT OF MONEY. WE NEED YOUR HELP BADLY. IF YOU CAN SEE IT IN YOUR HEART TO DONATE TO C.A.S.D.F, IT WOULD REALLY BE APPRECIATED BY LOTS OF FOLKS.
SEND YOUR TAX DEDUCTIBLE CONTRIBUTION TO:
CASDF
115 S. Division St.
CARTERVILLE, IL. 62918
Any amount is appreciated and folks do really need your help!!! In-kind donations are also accepted.
There are other ways of helping folks other than making monetary donations. Check out our CAS Thrift Shop. The last item on the menu on the left. That has address and phone # of the shop.
