3rd Annual #REF-4-STEPH Campaign 2024

While reading a recent post referencing Lin Yutang’s teaching ‘The Noble Art of Leaving Things Undone’, the lesson surrounding intentionally making choices resonated. I began to reflect on the myriads of choices we make in our nonprofit work. Specifically, which efforts do we choose that directly support the Blast Equality Collab (BEQ) Mission?

It was an impactful exercise and provided clarifying reflections on our meaningful work including the #REF-4-STEPH Campaign. 

#Daily Strong: Love. Learn. Legacy. Our campaign theme also delivered powerful messages. Many in our community enjoyed remembering Stephanie’s layers of love and pride in being an official by experiencing the creation of “Steph’s Pride” (Julia Vann). 

We are also grateful for those who chose to contribute to the 3rd Annual #REF-4-STEPH Campaign. This event has become a community staple among over 70 youth referees (and growing) and hundreds of game participants. Many wonderful human beings stepped up to donate OR showed up to referee and teach! We now have a situation where we have more referees than games to assign - good situation for helping create pathways and healthy officiating culture - and set some guidelines in the ecosystem!

Your choice to donate, or volunteer with us, IS making a difference! We remain committed to continuing to be good stewards of both the donations and the development of our gig-officiating leaders through #REF-4-STEPH!

In this Campaign, TOGETHER We:

• Donated $5250 to both organizations who supported Stephanie and continue to support thousands of others impacted by breast cancer ($10,500 total). Young Survival Coalition (YSC) & Living Beyond Breast Cancer (LBBC) nonprofits continue to express their gratitude for this annual campaign!

• We recruited and developed 15 new referees (the count is still rising); and
• We engaged community sponsors and matching donors! Even The raffle app was cool to watch spin: Raffle winner, Jeff –Congrats!

On behalf of ref-ology + Blast Equality Collab, we are grateful to the Daily family, our sponsors and our officiating community that came together, and delivered, for the 3rd Annual #REF-4-STEPH Campaign - 2024!

With Gratitude,

Shelley Russi, Don Vaden, David Arden

Please consider supportingour dedicated Sponsors: ref-ology, CTK Parish, Julia Vann Creative, Team Schuler - Compass Real Estate, Union City Auto Body, Chubby Noodle San Francisco, Fox 40, Smitty Apparel, iCREDIWEAR.