Boca Grande’s Island Disaster Fund ends with over $3.5 million in donations

The island Disaster Fund is now at $3,596,000 to aid island non-profits and businesses.

“It keeps coming in,” said co-organizer Larry Hannah, who is one of a group of volunteers who are helping to sort and select the donations that have helped with recovery from hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Officially they are ending the fund at year end and are not accepting any more donations. 

They will wind up the donations with the balance of grants settled by Dec. 31. “I will not send any back,” said Hannah on Tuesday. “We will be granting the balance today.”

Some donations are outstanding, as businesses have not all settled with insurers. In addition, some organizations had raised some of their own money, which the committee is working with. 

“We have got three or four holdovers,” said Hannah. “We will close down but we will have reserves for those situations.”

The fund, which is run through Lighthouse United Methodist Church, is managed by four volunteers. The unpaid group meets regularly to review applications. The panel includes Stephanie Newman, Mary O’Bannon, Sharon Cross and Larry Hannah. 

To wrap up, they will issue a report to the community with broad categories on how the money was disbursed. 

Hannah feels that the fast recovery, and the strong Christmas season, are in part due to the help the citizens of Boca Grande gave to this cause. 

“That was the intent,” said Hannah. “We all feel good about it.”

Getting business back on its feet was critical.

“They don’t want to see something new. And they don’t want to see something tall,” said Hannah. “They don’t want Fort Myers beach, what happened there, to happen here.

For questions, you can email Stephanie Newman at snewman@spiritflighteast.com or Mary O’Bannon at meobannon@yahoo.com