Lorraine Dierkes makes an excellent matchmaker. In the late 1990s, when she volunteered at her kids’ school, Sea Park Elementary in Satellite Beach, Fla., she learned that some families couldn’t afford for their kids to participate in academic activities. Field trips, music lessons, and other extras often fell by the wayside. Then there were the parents who were always happy to send a few extra dollars to help a needy child. Dierkes wondered whether there was a way to connect these two sets of people.
Through the school PTO, she created a database of parents who wanted to help. Whenever a child required financial assistance, an email with the details—but keeping the child’s name and personal information anonymous—would be sent and invariably the need would be met. The program worked well enough at Sea Park, and Dierkes didn’t give it much thought beyond that. Several years later, the family moved to Palm Bay, Fla., and the principal at Sunrise Elementary requested that Dierkes institute a similar program there. It was only after a few more years that Dierkes realized she might have something that could be scaled to other schools. The idea was the seed for the nonprofit foundation e-Angels.
At its most basic, e-Angels is an online portal that matches people in need with people who can give. Schools still serve as the go-between, forwarding requests to e-Angels, which then shares the need through email blasts and social media (Facebook has been a successful avenue). Donors can send money through PayPal or by check. Donations in kind for Florida schools have also worked well.
Dierkes is no stranger to nonprofits. As a teen, she volunteered at a home for the elderly, and more recently she has been active with the National Foster Parent Association, helping with training for foster parents (she has been a foster mom to 30 kids). She served as a PTO member for four-plus years and also volunteered with various districtwide school boards.
Her three children, Mary, Paul, and Tommy, are in their mid-20s now but still remember their mom’s contributions to the schools. Dierkes says that her time serving as PTO secretary, treasurer, and president afforded her a glimpse at a slice of life she might not otherwise have seen. “As a parent, you just don’t see how much poverty there is and how it can affect absolutely every facet of a child’s life,” she says. “Poverty has such a divisive nature to it, and it breaks your heart to see parents who can’t afford to give their children what they need.”
Dierkes plans on building e-Angels beyond Florida. She has received feelers from Chattanooga, Tenn., and as far away as Bridgeport, Conn. She also hopes to bring in more corporate sponsors. When one school needed 150 backpacks, e-Angels put out a call through VolunteerMatch; Medidata, an international medical software company, came to the rescue. Each backpack came with a letter of encouragement from a company executive. Dierkes works at eBay, which has also been generous with its giving. People can also sign up to donate 10 percent of their eBay sales.
E-Angels has had many heartwarming successes, and Dierkes delights in all of them. For example, it arranged for the financing of cap and gown fees for a girl who was the first in her family to graduate from high school. Dierkes also remembers a 1st grader whose parents couldn’t afford to buy him new shoes. When e-Angels found him a pair that worked, he excitedly remarked, “My guinea pig in heaven must have told an angel I needed new shoes.”
