Welcome to the official blog of, Pitch for a Cause! This page will serve to inform you of our mission to engage the citizens of Doylestown, bring awareness to their concerns, raise money to combat those concerns, and field a softball game between the two best-suited neighborhood charities. I’ll explain…

First off, my name is David and I recently served as an Americorps VISTA in New York City with a small non-profit organization named Common Cents. My work resulted in engaging 725 New York City public schools–from Jamaica, Queens to Greenwich Village, from Bed-Stuy to Park Slope–helping them raise $518,000 for social programming!

From there, each school proceeded to host roundtable discussions, deciding which neighborhood non-profit organization would have the most effective impact on the issues they cared about most (e.g. PS 48 raised $1500 to their local food pantry). This program, aptly named The Penny Harvest, has been operating since the early 90’s and has re-invested more than $8.1 million dollars into the New York City Metro community.

I want to bring a little bit of The Penny Harvest back to my hometown, back to Doylestown. Only instead of raising pennies, I would like to host a softball fundraiser this upcoming spring/summer. Only, here is the twist, have the people of Doylestown select two different neighborhood non-profit organizations that each team will compete for on their behalf…

By using outlets like the Doylestown Intelligencer, Twitter and Facebook as well as posting fliers in local businesses, I will prompt the people of Doylestown with this idea and ask them two questions:

1. What issue they care about most (e.g. health, education, the arts, environment, etc.)

then a few weeks later, once an issue is selected:

2. What organization would they prefer to combat said issue (e.g. if health is chosen: Foundations Behavorial Health, Bucks County Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, etc.)

Once the campaign has launched, I will create a tracking sheet–most likely a google document–that the people of Doylestown can easily vote on. The entire voting procedure will be transparent and for all to take part in.

Once two neighborhood non-profit organizations are selected, I will launch a PayPal account where businesses, players and their sponsors, and citizens can easily donate their money. Shortly after, the softball game will take place at a venue TBD, where the winning team’s non-profit will receive 80% of the share and the losing team will receive the remaining 20%.

I’m very excited to host this fundraiser and can assure my neighbors in Doylestown, that this fundraiser’s aim is to genuinely re-connect with our community and give everyone a voice on how to improve it! All funds raised will go directly towards the non-profit organizations selected.

If you would like to sponsor this fundraiser or if you have any questions regarding this event, please contact me via e-mail: pitchforacause@gmail.com

Warmly,

David R. Dillon