Carlinville Christmas Market selects 4 area charities

CARLINVILLE, ILL. -- The Carlinville Christmas Market Foundation (CCMF) announced that it has selected four Macoupin County charities to receive a percentage of any profits that result from the December 2008 Christmas Market. They include the Carlinville Food Pantry, the Gillespie Food Pantry, the Girard Food Pantry, and the Macoupin Center for the Developmentally Disables (MCDD).

“We received written requests from 11 organizations and chose these four because they represented the greatest number of people in need from throughout the county,” said CCCMF spokesman Rich Minster. “We would like to help all 11, but if we do have profits to share, we want to present each organization we’ve selected with a respectable amount of money.

“In the last two years, our Christmas Market has not made a profit, mainly because of bad weather that kept visitors away or shortened their stays during the three-day festival. Fortunately, anonymous donors have generously stepped forward with cash donations that we divided among our charities. We don’t have control of the weather and, going forward, we don’t want to rely on anonymous benefactors each year, so we have to limit how many organizations we try to help.”

Minster also explained that all money contributed to the Carlinville Christmas Market through grants and through donations by corporate sponsors, organizations, businesses, and individuals goes directly toward producing the current year’s festival. “A few people have asked us why they shouldn’t just donate money directly to area charities. The answer is that the Christmas Market is not a pipeline to charities. Our non-profit Foundation’s first goal is to produce the Christmas Market, and that is what our sponsors are supporting. Once we have produced the December festival, we determine in January whether we made a profit. If so, most of that profit goes toward the next Christmas Market and, in keeping with our second goal, some of it goes to the charities we designate each spring.”