There were cheers when the screen in Penrose House showed the highly anticipated number: $1,605,905, the amount raised by the community during the just-completed 40th anniversary campaign for the Empty Stocking Fund.

It was surpassed only by a $1.7 million total during those shutdown pandemic times of uncertain and unplanned special needs.

Celebrating the successful year at the annual closing reception Feb. 13 were donors, sponsors and representatives of the 20 local health and human services nonprofits that had checks to pick up and pictures to take.

The entire amount was shared by the nonprofits, with no administrative costs for the annual drive, a project of Gazette Charities Foundation and El Pomar Foundation.

As Gazette Charities Foundation Executive Director Deb Mahan had noted, everyone in the community knows someone who has been touched by those nonprofits, which together serve people birth to death.

In early February, The Gazette had run five pages of names, 1,585 individuals, families, businesses and groups that had donated to this Empty Stocking Fund.

There were 300 donors added to the list, a very positive sign, Mahan pointed out. “It’s the meaning of philanthropy, the love of humankind.”

Jerry Bruni, whose Bruni Foundation offers a match for donations, said that with this support to the agencies, “people’s lives are changed.”

And, he said, the positive is that the people in this community work together toward this common goal.

There’s even more to do as the community and needs grow, Bruni pointed out, using the words of Robert Frost from his “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”:

“But I have promises to keep,

“And miles to go before I sleep,

“And miles to go before I sleep.”

The 2024 nonprofits: American Red Cross, Care and Share Food Bank, Catholic Charities, CPCD Head Start, Lutheran Family Services, Mercy’s Gate, Mt. Carmel Veterans Service Center, NAMI, Partners in Housing, Peak Vista, Pikes Peak Hospice & Palliative Care, The Resource Exchange, The Place, Safe Passage, Salvation Army, Silver Key, TESSA, Tri-Lakes Cares, Westside Cares and The YMCA of the Pikes Peak Region.