Indianapolis is home to many great nonprofits, large and small. We are proud to be among their numbers! Whether you’ve been a supporter of ours since the beginning in 2013 or you’re just now learning about us, hello! We realized we’ve not said much about ourselves lately and thought perhaps we should do an introduction.
We began because Dave Withey, our executive director, had been helping his aging friends and family with small home repairs for a number of years and it struck him how impossible it would be for them to have these small home repair projects completed due to age and income if they didn’t have family or friends to help. He would often be asked if he would be willing to help a neighbor of theirs with home repair. Another elderly homeowner, Dave began realizing there were many, many people just like them all around him. As the old adage goes, “see a need fill a need.” Dave and his trusty red pickup truck were soon bopping around town doing a series of small repairs for seniors in need. It wasn’t exactly what he had envisioned doing with his retirement, but he had known he wanted to do something, so why not this.
It didn’t take long for Dave to realize the need was far bigger than he alone could attempt to resolve. He teamed up with a couple of contacts, Tom Hawkins then Jeanette Jefferis. Both had done volunteer work with him before, both also newly retired.
NeighborLink Indianapolis Foundation, Inc. was officially formed in 2013 after Dave was introduced to the overall NeighborLink network. Like other NeighborLink organizations we strive to meet the home repair needs of neighbors in our community by utilizing volunteers to do most of those repairs. Unlike our NeighborLink brethren, we focused on seniors and individuals with disabilities and narrowed our scope of projects down to what we were able to tackle. Those services can look like gutter repairs, patching holes, caulking windows, removing old paint and putting a fresh coat on, repairing flooring, toilets, tubs, etc. We put an emphasis on helping homeowners with citations from The Marion County Public Health Department to prevent them from incurring fines, or at worst, losing their home.
Since forming, we have completed more than 3,000 projects! Some numbers from 2020 specifically are:
276 projects completed (pandemic and all)
54 projects related to citations
26 years was the average number of years lived in the home
73% of homeowners with projects were women
53% of requests in 2020 were from individuals with disabilities
93 the age of our oldest homeowner with a requested project
$1,270 is the average monthly income of a homeowner with a request.
The need for NeighborLink Indianapolis is evident and grows more so each year. With that need comes the need for volunteers to help complete those projects and the need for donors to help fund those projects. If you’re wanting ways to get plugged in to the community, serving the seniors and individuals with disabilities in our community is a pretty great way to give back. Join us this year!
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