Giving Tuesday 2020 — Donate to Berks Bards!

Berks Bards is a poetry-promoting nonprofit is a 501(c)(3) organization. With no state arts grant funding likely available in 2021 due to the pandemic's impacts, Giving Tuesday as December 1, 2020, is a great opportunity to support Berks Bards with a tax-deductible donation.

Donations later into December, until the end of the tax-year of 2020, are also welcome. Every and any amount is appreciated and will make a huge difference in our community work with our poetry reach.

Here are the ways you can make a donation:
 

• Make an online PayPal donation at TinyURL.com/BerksBards (this can be via a PayPal account or just with a credit card but using PayPal as a payment processor)
  
• Send a check made out to Berks Bards > email us at berksbards at gmail dot com for our mailing address
• If it's more practical to wait until later in 2021, keep us in mind for the future

Thank you for you to those who have supported us in the past, to those who are able to afford to support us now, and to everyone who shares word of our community-geared work through the lens of poems. Our gratitude is more immense than we can fit into beloved language.

And remember to keep connected well one conversation at a time, in these tumultuous moments we are all surviving through nowadays. It's important for every heart. [] I felt it shelter to speak to you. — Emily Dickinson

Sincerely,
Your friends at Berks Bards

Friends Helping Friends Fundraiser via Boscov's for Local Nonprofits, Including Berks Bards.

Every year, Berks Bards is a part of Friends Helping Friends, a fundraising event hosted by Boscov's across communities where stores are located. Customers who participate during one day or both days of this two-day event are able to support the nonprofit of their choice during their shopping because 5% of total sales are donated to the ones you note wanting to benefit from your purchase. There is also a 20% off discount on a wide variety of products for sale, as a perk.

Please be sure to select Boscov's Berkshire at checkout in shopping online to be able to search and find Berks Bards from the available drop-down options of nonprofits to support.

Shopping in-person and online will all count toward this fundraising offered by Boscov's.

This year, Boscov's simplified the process in a new approach due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so instead of those of us helping to run nonprofits selling tickets for the perks, how the rules have worked in the past, all you have to do is note what participating nonprofit you want your purchases to benefit if you're at a register, and if you shop online, you choose the nonprofit you'd like to support at the checkout before finalizing your order.

With state arts grant funding impacts due to the pandemic meaning funding we normally apply for and receive may not be offered at all in 2021 as a usual part of our support in keeping our programs in local communities, this fundraising is an incredibly useful opportunity for Berks Bards and many other vital nonprofits. 

We ask that if you have any shopping to do at Boscov's in-person or online flexibly by mid-October, please mark your calendar, and help to support our efforts as you shop. We are so grateful for the support we receive and how it helps us to stay active in communities in a time when poetry is showing its deep value even more at the surfaces of daily living in a far from easy world we're all sharing nowadays. Thank you, and please pass word of this along if you know of anyone who may have some shopping plans in mind in mid-October!

Well-Versed: A Collaboration Between Art Plus Gallery in West Reading & Berks Bards.

Last Friday, Art Plus Gallery in West Reading hosted its opening for an exhibit called Art Well-Versed. This came together as a project of the gallery collaborating with Berks Bards through a recent call for submissions we offered, partnering as Berks County-based nonprofits.

The call for submissions involved having folks visit to pick pieces of art to write poems about for this collaboration, pairing one finalized poem with each piece of art. Some artists wrote poems about their own art, while a good number of poets who had no ties to the art brought their imaginations and inspiration to the page based on what it stirred in them, upon seeing the pieces.

A total of 20 local poets contributed, and the exhibit opening celebrated the poetry with a reading by many of the poets sharing their penned words in-person. Dozens of  people filtered throughout the gallery's space to enjoy the whims of words and local art on display by so many talented artists in our region.

Stop into the gallery soon to see this exhibit!

(Hours)

Wednesdays-Saturdays: 12 pm - 7 pm
Sundays: 11 am - 4 pm
Closed Monday & Tuesdays