Beards for Beacon House Fundraiser

MARQUETTE — ‘No Shave November’ though very popular for keeping out the cold is also popular for raising awareness for local non–profits.  Beacon house is a non–profit home for patients who are in critical care at UPHS in Marquette.

VAST, a local insurance agency, has partnered with Beacon House for the last few years for ‘No Shave November’ in order to raise awareness and funds for the non–profit home.

“I would say for almost half of a decade they have been a supporter of our Upper Peninsula Celebrity Golf Tournament and last year and the year before they started the Beards for Beacon Fundraiser, and it has been a really fun month in November and it kind of sparked out of ‘Movember’, No Shave November, and they wanted to keep the proceeds locally so we are just grateful that they thought of us,” said Andrew Lorinser, PR Manager for Beacon House.

“Beacon House is just a natural fit. We’ve been involved with them for quite a long time… well, two different things, the first is social media because the donations are pretty much 99% from Facebook so it’s putting things out there daily, posting about what we’re up to. The other part is the beards themselves as the sort of talking point. Insurance, in the industry in general, is you’re normally pretty clean cut, clean shaven so when people see us looking scruffy they ask about what’s going on and that is kind of our opportunity to talk about what Beacon House does for this community and what we’re doing to help them out,” stated Scott Reddinger, Personal Insurance Manager at VAST.

The fundraiser has already raised over $500 towards helping Beacon House and with several weeks left in the month they hope to gain much more.