The Signs of Business

Signs of Support Grant recipient Wish Upon A Star is an Evansville based non-profit organization that has been granting wishes to children with life-threatening or terminal illnesses since 1985. The story of how they wound up with a new van and vehicle graphics is rather special. I’ll let Janet Weyer the Executive Director of Wish Upon A Star tell in her own words how it came about:

Receiving the Signs of Support Grant has been a wish come true for an organization who is dedicated to granting wishes for children of the tri-state facing a life-threatening or terminal illness. In the middle of the 2010 Fall Festival Wish Upon A Star began having problems with our 1998 Doge Caravan “the Wish Van”. Of course Fall Festival is our single largest fund-raising event each year and as you can imagine a very hectic time for our organization. Praying the van would keep running we managed to complete the fest with our troubled vehicle.

Just after the conclusion of the Fall Festival the van went to Raben to find out what our problems were, the news was not good, the transmission was shot. Although Raben is very generous and provides service on our vehicle at not charge replacing the transmission in a van that was 12 years old with well over 100,000 miles was just not an option. A new van was purchased in late October with the help of Audubon Chrysler in Henderson Ky. We were thrilled to have a new van that was reliable and had very low mileage on it. However, Wish Upon A Star depends on community referrals to find area children in need of wishes and one important way we raise awareness of our organization is participating in community events such as parades, festivals, and public appearances. The problem was the new van was a blank canvas with no graphics to identify our organization. Since we had just spent several thousand dollars which were not in our budget for the year we had very little if any funds to put graphics on the new van.

Hoping the cost might not be as much as I expected I stopped in at Ameristamp Sign-A-Rama to see if I cold get a quote on graphics for the van. I walked in on a Wednesday or Thursday afternoon and told Sherri Hill my needs. She immediately asked if I knew about the “Signs of Support” grant. I did not. She gave me information and referred me to your website, the only problem was the grant deadline was the following Monday afternoon. I left your office and went straight back to the Wish Upon A Star office where I downloaded the grant application, requested a quote, wrote a cover letter and submitted the application for a “Signs of Support” grant to cover the cost of a partial wrap for the new van.

I informed the board of directors that the grant was submitted and we all crossed our fingers, said a small prayer and hoped for the best. Knowing the grant announcements would come in January, I patiently waited and was so excited when I received the initial email stating our grant request had been approved. This grant has allowed Wish Upon A Star to have our van wrapped with professional graphics that will help raise awareness of our organization in communities throughout the tri-state.

Everyday, Wish Upon A Star uses this van to travel throughout our tri-state area to meet prospective families, attend community events, and transport our “Wish Kids” to the airports and/or destinations to make their dreams come true. We will now have a van that looks very professional with graphics that are more visible and beautiful than I ever could have imagined. Your design team did a wonderful job in incorporating all the necessary elements we requested into a beautiful design. Our van will not be missed as we travel the tri-state to help kids who are facing big challenges. From the bottom of our hearts we thank you for making our wish come true.

It is our pleasure to be the provider of Vehicle Graphics to Wish Upon A Star. Thank you for your dedication and devotion to some of the neediest residents of our community. It is organizations like you that continue to make Evansville, Indiana a wonderful place to live and work.

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