Guelph chapter of 100 Men Who Give a Damn moves online to raise money for coronavirus response

They’re still giving a damn — even during a pandemic.

The Guelph chapter of 100 Men Who Give a Damn has moved its fundraising efforts online due to the novel coronavirus.

The group, which has already outgrown its name with over 200 members, meets four times a year at the Guelph Armoury with $100 in hand.

Over drinks and friendly banter, three local charities or organizations are invited to make a brief pitch, and then members vote on who should get all of the money.

Now in its third year, the group has raised almost $120,000 for organizations such as Wyndham House, Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis and Stonehenge Therapeutic Community.

But the coronavirus pandemic and social-distancing rules have thrown a wrench into the group’s quarterly meetings. Its meeting scheduled for May 13 has been cancelled.

“We can’t conduct business as usual,” spokesperson Tom Gill said. “But there’s a lot of community agencies and groups that could probably use the funding now more than over, and we decided to move forward.”

The group is encouraging its members to contribute online to the Guelph Community Response Fund, which has been specifically set up by the Guelph Community Foundation and the United Way to meet the challenges facing local organizations during the pandemic.

Gill said making contributions to that fund was a no-brainer.

“A lot of local charities that are being supported by the community response fund are actually charities that we’ve contributed to in the past,” he said. “It’s congruent to our goals of contributing to local charities who do great work.”

As of Friday afternoon, the group had already raised over $12,000 in five days. Gill even joked that the $10,000 goal they had set might have been too low.

“We have over 200 members, so we have the potential to raise $20,000,” he said.

Members can contribute online until May 31.

Gill said he doesn’t know when the meetings will start back up again, but he said this method is the next best thing.

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“We’re trying to do what we can and we’re pretty happy to do it,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Guelph chapter of 100 Women Who Care, which has already raised over $265,000, has scheduled a meeting for July 13.

But organizer Sharon Lewis says the group is working on plans to take its activities online as well.