The CovingtonOutreach Association (COA) was organized as an Ohio non-profit corporation in July 2005. The COA received its 501(c)(3) non-profit status in September 2006 and continues the emergency assistance ministry carried out over the past several decades by the Covington area churches. We have formed a Board of Directors with a member from each of our six original participating churches and a Bible Study Group that consist of the Covington Church of the Brethren, Covington United Church of Christ, Covington Presbyterian, St. John’s Lutheran, Frieden’s Lutheran, St. Teresa’s and the Focus Group. Cindy Miller, Church Secretary for the Church of the Brethren, serves as our part-time Executive Director.
At the end of 2005, we were given seed money from the Covington Ministerial Association to get started. We have received generous donations from the Covington Eagles, the Community Chest, the Miami County Foundation, Salvation Army, American Legion, The Ladies Auxiliary of Troy as well as our member churches, their congregations, local businesses, residents and friends of the community. This spring, the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts gathered over 1300 cans of food for our pantry from this community. The Girl Scouts and their parents also volunteered in a shared fundraiser with Covington Church of the Brethren and the COA at Ft. Rowdy Gathering in 2007. We thank all of these groups, and all of you have donated food, time and money to the COA's outreach ministry.
Thanks to the Miami County Foundation, we received a scholarship for Cindy Miller to attend Edison Community College's Community Leadership five week series on establishing a new non-profit. This has been an excellent learning opportunity for her, and we are very appreciative of the scholarship.
We have also been rewarded with countless hours of donated time. Our volunteer Board of Directors spent many long winter evenings in meetings to ensure our non-profit application to the IRS was as accurate and complete as possible, as well as to comply with all of the formalities of a new corporation. Additionally, Cindy developed a workshop to train volunteers to assist with the food pantry (to date there are 25 COA pantry volunteers). In 2007 our many volunteers have already logged nearly a 1,000 hours of work. This is an amazing group of people. Thank you to all of our volunteers for your contributions, and we invite everyone to learn more about volunteer opportunities with COA.
We also are working beyond our community to extend funds to grow our organization into one that does more than meet immediate needs, but, in fact, creates permanent change in the lives of our neighbors.
