Spur of the Moment Facebook Post Leads to a Tidy Sum Raised for Local Charity

By Jeremy Coumbes on December 2, 2019 at 3:32pm

A spur of the moment social media post, led to a tidy some of money being raised for a local charity yesterday.

Ken Dobson who runs the Jacksonville Speedway was enjoying a quiet Sunday morning when he and his daughter saw an article on the local soup kitchen that sparked them into action.

There was an article in yesterday’s newspaper that talked about the soup kitchen’s need to have a new roof, and my daughter saw it, and she has been handling the online ticket sales for the speedway. She asked the question, hey couldn’t we do something with social media and the online store for the speedway to raise some money for them real quick for this?

So that is how it hatched. We made a Facebook post in the morning, came up with a name, Soup Kitchen Sunday, and it was started. We used the Jacksonville Speedway e-commerce platform to just accept donations which made it something that we could execute pretty quickly”

The Spirit of Faith Soup Kitchen has been in operation since 1991. The Spirit of Faith serves meals to the needy and provides an after school reading program to elementary school students.

Spirit of Faith learned recently that their facility located at 632 N. Main Street in Jacksonville is in great need of a new roof which will cost approximately $50,000.00 to replace. Many shingles have blown off and more leaks are appearing that are forcing the non-profit group to act as quickly as possible to try and raise the funds before more damage is done to the building.

Dobson and his daughter created the online fundraising drive yesterday shortly after discussing the article.

Dobson said he was pleasantly surprised at the quick response to their effort.

The initial Facebook post kind of took off a little bit and donations started rolling in and I think by 10:00 Sunday morning we had raised about $1,000.00. From there it just kind of kept going and people kept sharing the post and by the end of the day, and with a few donations last night and that are still trickling in this morning, it looks like we raised about $5,600.00 dollars for them.”

Dobson said that unfortunately the Jacksonville Speedway website went down over the weekend, unrelated to the soup kitchen project. But the Speedway is still giving area residents the opportunity to contribute to the roof fund via a link on social media.

The link for the Square donation platform will be available, I am going to keep the post pinned to the Jacksonville Speedway Facebook page and we will leave that link up throughout the holiday season. If people want to give in a way that is fairly convenient, you just go to the Jacksonville Speedway Facebook page and you’ll find the big post about the event and in that post is the link to donate. People can donate anywhere from $10.00 to $100.00 to this project and we will continue to forward the money to Spirit of Faith, and we intend to give them a check today for the proceeds from the funds raised yesterday.”

The Jacksonville Speedway Facebook page can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/JacksonvilleSpeedway/

The Facebook event link where you can donate can be found at:

If you would like to make a donation, but are unable to utilize the social media outlet, an account has been set up at CNB Bank and Trust in Jacksonville for the Spirit of Faith Roof Replacement Fund.