Ballard Eagleson VFW Post 3063’s November newsletter is available for download here. Highlights of November’s issue include: Ballard Eighteen becomes Nineteen; Post provides honor guard for Mariano Berona’s funeral; and how the VFW stays tax-exempt.
How the VFW stays tax-exempt: Community Service
By Harold Rodenberger
Since our founding as a federally chartered organization in 1899, our members have worked to help veterans and their families, to further patriotism and Americanism, and to help our communities. Because these goals are part of our mission the Internal Revenue Service has granted us tax-exempt status under the provisions of Section 501 (c) (19) of the tax code.
To maintain our tax-exempt status, each month we report community service performed by our members. Reports from the posts and districts are forwarded to and consolidated by the departments and from there forwarded to our national headquarters. To make these reports more complete we ask that each of our members forward qualifying actions so as much as possible can be included each month.
You might be surprised to learn that many things you do should be included so please make a note to compile and forward your contributions in the following areas.
Community Service: Activities that benefit your community, parks or neighborhood such as:
- Recycling
- Picking up trash
- Beautification projects
- Monetary donations to a local park, farmers’ market, or similar.
Citizenship Education and Americanism: Participation in:
- Parades
- Patriotic holiday events
- Public ceremonies
- Presenting flags or educational materials
- Attending funerals
- POW/MIA activities
- Loyalty Day activities
- Legislative activities
- Flying the American Flag (please specify lighted or unlit)
- Participation in Color/Honor Guard activities or placing flags on veterans’ graves.
Aid to Others:
- Hospital and nursing home visits
- Visits with senior citizens or house-bound neighbors
- Donations of care packages
- Helping to organize a blood drive or individual donations of blood, platelets or plasma
- Fundraising or assisting to build handicapped ramps or other home repairs and transporting others to doctors or hospital visits
- Donations of money or materials to the needy or thrift stores or other charitable organizations (please itemize so we can assign dollar values)
- Donations to homeless or to organizations that help the homeless and other charitable causes such as the USO, cancer society, March of Dimes, etc.
Youth Activities:
- Assisting at schools as guest speaker, volunteer coaching
- Donating money, materials or time to support Scouts, children’s sports or band functions
- Helping with Special Olympics or other help for special students or children.
Voice of Democracy, Youth Essay and Patriotic Art:
- Donations of time and money to locate, encourage and assist students to enter the VFW Voice of Democracy, Patriot’s Pen, Youth Essay and Patriotic Art contests.
Safety:
- Giving or attending classes or time and money spent to encourage safety, broken down by pedestrian, drug awareness, recreational, highway, fire or home safety.
Military Assistance:
- Any support given to a military unit, individual, or family member
- Sponsoring or attending “welcome home” ceremonies and other ceremonies honoring the military
Shredding truck visits Post 3063
Bill Hoeller, Gail Engler, and Pete Krawitz help shred documents Oct. 2, 2016 during a community shredding event in the post parking lot. During the three hours the truck was there the post shredded about 600 pounds of sensitive documents brought in by post members. The post will plan another shredding event next summer, so save wear and tear on your home shredder and save those old documents, ledgers, and check books for a professional shredding operation. This shredder can handle staples, paper clips, smaller bull clamps, ledger books, and other bulky documents that won’t go through a home shredder.
Post catches up on flag retirements, more scheduled
Bill Hoeller (left) and Harold Rodenberger (right) conducted a flag retirement ceremony Sept. 18, 2016. They honored twenty-seven unserviceable American Flags by properly disposing of them in their portable incineration device. They are now caught up so if you or your neighbors have an unserviceable flag, bring it by the office during regular office hours and they will add it to the collection for the next retirement ceremony.
District 2 convenes meeting at Post 3063
By Harold Rodenberger
On Sept. 24 District 2 met at our post for its quarterly meeting and School of Instruction.
In the Department of Washington there are 108 posts divided into thirteen districts. Our post is part of District 2, which also includes Rainier (2289), Farwell Roosevelt (2713), Vashon (2826), Blackburn-Aurora (3348), Burien (4314), and Seattle (6599) Posts.
Each district serves as an intermediate level of administration between the individual posts and the department headquarters. District officers guide the posts by answering questions, training and inspecting as necessary. The School of Instruction conducted at this meeting helped train post level officers.
Another important function of the district is to screen entries for VFW programs including those for scouts, teachers, first responders and veteran of the year among others, and forward the winners to department level.
Our next district meeting will be on Nov. 19 at Farewell-Roosevelt Post 2713 in West Seattle. Lunch is served at 11:30 a.m. and the meeting starts at 12:30 p.m. All post members are invited to attend.