Montreal ‘Mother of people’ celebrates new charity status

‘Carolyn’s Community’, a Montreal non-profit organization that has been supporting a growing number of organizations — is now a registered Charity. Run almost entirely on her own for more than 20 years, Carolyn Bouchard-MacNeil has hit milestone after milestone.

It all began in 2002 with a gift-wrapping party among friends and family that snowballed into a toy drive that Bouchard-MacNeil says she ran on the side as a passion project.

Since then, every year she’s amassed more and more gifts and the project has ballooned to include a collection of more than 7,000 gifts last year for women and children in most of the women’s shelters in Montreal, as well as organizations that support refugees, single women and teens moving out of group homes.

Ten years after the pilot project and through the power of word of mouth, Bouchard-MacNeil has since started collecting furniture, kitchenware, clothing, linens, and towels that were often sought after by many of the organizations she’s come to support.

Over time, she’s even started to run different projects like back-to-school supply collections and food drives at various schools, which she was all doing from home.

But things began to change a year and a half ago when ‘Carolyn’s Community’ reached a new status.

“I would say about a year and a half ago, I became a not-for-profit, and I got all my branding done, and I became an official entity and organization,” said Bouchard-MacNeil. “I have volunteers all over the city that help us.”

Becoming a non-profit helped Bouchard-MacNeil push her organization forward, and she now has six board directors who help her manage the donations she provides for organizations such as Acte D’Amour, Elizabeth House, Shield of Athena, and the Native Women’s Shelter — to name a few.

“She’s been helping us since 2016, so for holidays, especially for kids, you know, the toys, and for women as well, a single woman — so every time during a Valentine’s Day or Women’s National Day, we receive a love gift from her for the women, and during the school as well, we receive backpacks for school,” said Christ Kanghoud, Co-Founder of Acte D’Amour, a non-profit organization that collects donations from Carolyn’s Community at least once a week.

“She’s one of our best partners who really helped us to give those kinds of things to the families in Montreal,” he added.

But that’s not all that’s been happening at ‘Carolyn’s Community’ lately.

“About two months ago, we got our official charity status through the federal government. We got our registered charity number, so I’m very happy to report that because it just makes things easier when we’re getting donations to be able to issue tax receipts and this sort of thing,” she explained excitedly.

That’s why she decided to take on a new project: a fundraising campaign that’s running now in an effort to raise $22,000 in honour of 22 years of service, which is all tax-deductible for those interested in donating.

“For the fundraiser, you can actually go to carolynscommunity.com and it’s under donations, and that will bring you directly to a site where you can make a donation towards our fundraising campaign,” she said.

The fundraiser also serves to help Bouchard-MacNeil bridge funding until they can get interest from someone who believes in their cause to donate, which she said has been going well thus far.

“I’m happy to say as of this morning, we hit, I think it was close to 70 per cent of our goals,” she chuffed.

Bouchard-MacNeil says she also hopes that funding will help her continue her mission even further as she’s got even more ideas, like another new project she’s working on for the summer — a workshop called ‘Connecting People Through the Power of Giving’.

“We’re going to be offering like six workshops for, you know, time management, respect, communication skills, team building, and just basically giving teens the skills so that they can actually earn the certificate and give back between 40 and 50 hours through jobs that we’re doing in the community — and this will give them a certificate program that they can actually put on their resume so that when they’re looking for work, they’re actually prepared and they have some life experience,” she went on to explain.

“I call her the mother of people who don’t have mothers, she’s incredible, what a woman,” said Kanghoud in admiration of her hard-working and entrepreneurial spirit.