Saving the West Klosterman Preserve has been the major focus of WK Preservation Group for almost five years. This weekend, we achieved one more major milestone. The Mr. Friendly Matching Campaign met its $100,000 goal in only 8 weeks from its start. And that means that John Giliss, Mr. Friendly, has matched your $100,000 with his own contribution, adding a total of $200,000 to the campaign to save the Preserve.

It is worth noting that several people have supported matching campaigns over the last year, and their combined efforts and your contributions have raised over $400,000 toward the $1.5 million target we must meet to match the $1.5 million that has been promised by Pinellas County. Our thanks again to Jennifer Wirth, Sally McConnell, Sanne Kure-Jensen and John Gilliss for their generous sponsorship of our matching campaigns, and our thanks to all our donors for making the matching campaigns a success.

Take a breath and reflect on how much has been achieved by all of us coming together with a goal of preserving this 14 acre Slice of Paradise for the animals, plants and trees that live there, and for the people in Pinellas County who are fast losing these natural treasures to the developers.

Okay, exhale that breath and think about this. With all the success, we still have a major challenge to meet. In March, we agreed in a contract with Pinellas County that we would campaign to match their commitment of $1.5 million by raising $1.5 million from public supporters. We have committed our organization and our supporters to meet that goal. That is what is expected of us today — to work hard to raise the funds that will join with the County’s money to buy the Preserve from Pinellas County Schools for $3 million.

And the deadline in that contract says we will meet our commitment by September 15. We have made great progress, over $200,000 in the last eight weeks, but we still have about $497,000 to go.

What are we doing about it? Most of our group, and if you’re reading this, we think you are part of the group, are thinking about new ways to reach new people who would support our cause and help us meet our goals. Reaching new people has been key to the successes of the last few weeks — we have hundreds of new donors who have pitched in. But we need more.

We will be actively promoting our goal to save the West Klosterman Preserve in social media and social media advertising, as well as local television, radio, and news media. We have doubled up on the frequency and urgency of our newsletters. See our latest media activity on our two events and news feed pages Events and News and News Feed. As always, if you have ideas to help us meet our commitment to the County and to all of our donors and supporters, please let us know. Contact us at info@wkpreserve.com.

Again, we’ve come a long way, and we’re almost there. Let’s get this done!

Sincere respects,
Tex Carter and the WKPG team