Thank you Susan and Tom

Thank you, Susan

Susan Sim has stepped down from our fundraising committee, and we want to thank her for her selfless commitment to the paper over the years.

In 2013, Susan became a board member of Friends of the Charlotte News, the organization we established to receive tax-deductible gifts to the paper. She became an enthusiastic, hardworking and generous member of the Friends Board.

Susan worked closely with Susanne Davis, who wrote:

“All of our fundraising efforts were a group effort. We did whatever was needed—stuffing envelopes, editing copy, planning and hosting parties, making food, meeting with donors and prospects, and so on. Susan always hosted our meetings. I’ll miss her.”

Thanks in part to Susan’s commitment and experience, the Friends met its fundraising goals every year.

When The Charlotte News received IRS 501(c)(3) designation earlier this year, Susan joined our fundraising committee where she helped plan our summer and year-end campaigns and made many phone calls on our behalf.

Thank you, Susan, for all your hard work on behalf of The Charlotte News over the past eight years. We wish you all the best.

Thanks, Tom

Tom Tiller recently stepped down from our Board of Directors.

He told me recently that his father, when someone would do something right, would say to that person, “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”

Well, Tom did lots of things right during his four years on The News board. Among many other contributions, he organized and directed the work of the Strategic Planning Committee, which has given clear purpose and direction to the board’s recent work. He generously hosted, along with his wife, Michelle, fundraising events at his home, which helped put us in a far more secure financial position, with the ability to withstand the financial pressures that have threatened the survival of local journalism elsewhere.

Perhaps most important, he brought an infectious can-do enthusiasm to the board’s work, a sense that there was nothing we couldn’t do if we worked together as a real team. And we could have fun doing it.

Tom’s presence on the board these past four years brought out the best in all of us. Thanks, Tom, for being such a large part of our effort to make The News worthy of the community we live in. You’re a good man, indeed.