Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Tucson Together Hopes for Successful Charity Game

Posted By on Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 2:12 PM

The Tucson Together fund will hopefully get a big boost from the March 25 charity game in Tucson between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers, says Bill Carnegie, chairman of the committee board of Tucson Together.

Tucson Together, Major League Baseball and the Pima County Sports and Tourism Authority teamed up to create the charity game, which comes on the heels of a March 7 charity game between the Chicago White Sox and Arizona Diamondbacks that benefited the Christina-Taylor Green Memorial Fund, Carnegie says.

Tickets are almost sold out, and the game will begin at 1:05 p.m. at Kino Stadium, formerly known as Tucson Electric Park.

Tucson Together began three weeks ago with the consolidation of several Jan. 8 charity funds, and is run by the Community Foundation for Southern Arizona. At the time of the merger, the funds had collected $250,000 in cash donations and $75,000 in pledged donations. Since then, Tucson Together has brought in another $20,000 or so in donations, Carnegie says.

Several funds chose to stay independent from Tucson Together, including the Gabriel Zimmerman Scholarship Fund, which has collected just over $40,000 in donations, says Jonathan Klein, a San Francisco attorney and alum of the University of California at Santa Cruz, Zimmerman's alma mater.

Although the fund is still short of the $50,000 needed to reach endowment at the university, Klein says it is just a matter of time before the donations reach the required amount.

"We'll get there for sure," he says. "And once we get there, we hope it will keep going."

The Gabriel Zimmerman Memorial Fund has raised $33,000, says Colleen Bagnall, development director of Child and Family Resources in Tucson, the organization that started the fund. That number is up from $32,000 two weeks ago.

Although donations seem to be leveling off, Bagnall says she is "very thankful that people care this much about donating to the fund," adding that she did not originally realize so much money would be raised.

The Pima Community College Foundation Fund honoring victims of the Jan. 8 shooting is moving forward with donations, although the amount will likely remain modest until the foundation's major fundraiser in June, says Cheryl House, executive director of the PCC Foundation.

Although the foundation will not release how much money in donations has been collected by the fund, House says the foundation's Scholarship Golf Tournament on June 11 will probably raise around $25,000.

The annual scholarship will target students who plan to build careers in public and community service, she says.

To donate to the Gabriel Zimmerman Memorial Fund, contact Bagnall, of Child and Family Resources, at 321-3778, or e-mail donationsforgabe@cfraz.org.

To donate to the Gabriel Zimmerman Scholarship Fund, contact Joop Rubens at (831) 502-7275 or e-mail jrubens@ucsc.edu.

To donate to Tucson Together, go to tucsontogetheraz.com.

To donate to the PCC Foundation Fund, contact the foundation at 206-4646 or e-mail foundation@pima.edu.