MANISTEE--The Lakeside Club of Manistee raised thousands of dollars through their Festival of Trees holiday event in December.
The event has raised $48,000 in donations over the last four years -- with much of the money supporting local nonprofits and scholarships.
For more than 100 years -- the Lakeside Club of Manistee has been supporting the community through a variety of initiatives.
This past Christmas -- the club raised $15,000 from their festival of trees event.
This year, the club donated $5,000 to the Manistee County Historical Museum and the Ramsdell Regional Center for the Arts.
President of The Lakeside Club, Deb Green said the community enjoys the performances the Ramsdell brings to Manistee.
“It’s an outstanding building. It has an absolutely incredible theater. It brings art and music and those kind of things to our community. Being able to have a building like that be part of our community is extremely important to us,” said Green.
The director of the Ramsdell said it was a welcome surprise to be selected for the donation.
“Any donation to a nonprofit is always wonderfully received and when we found out it was $5,000, that was just amazing,” said Laura Ortiz-Lavelle.
And that $5,000 is going to go a long way.
“We have our summer camp, our theater camp, we have our exhibits that are going to be opening up here in Hardy Hall on January 31st.”
Just down the road is the Manistee Historical Museum.
Executive director Mark Fedder said the donation they received will help fund an existing project.
“We are currently in the process of doing a preservation study to look forward to the future and what the future holds for this building and the museum here,” said Fedder. “We kind of started that last year and the money that we received from the Lakeside Club will go toward the completion of that study.”
The Lakeside Club will use an additional $5,000 of raised funds for scholarships to support continued education for women in neighboring schools.