Dear Friends and Colleagues:

CFC = Caring For our Communities.  This year’s theme shows exactly what the Gateway Combined Federal Campaign is all about. Thanks to you and your co-workers, the CFC is able to reach out to the community at local, national and international levels. Every dollar helps improve the quality of life for our neighbors, whether you define them as people next door or on the other side of the planet. Through last year’s Gateway CFC campaign, federal employees in the Greater St. Louis area raised $3,201,372 for more than 1,575 nonprofit organizations. That’s a lot of compassion and caring for the community, and now it’s time to do it again!

This year, federal employees from an expanded Gateway CFC are being given the opportunity to participate in the CFC, some for the first time. The “Gateway” CFC boundaries now reach much of eastern Missouri, from Kirksville to Poplar Bluff. Please see our geographic region page for details and a map of the new Gateway CFC. If you are in the newly expanded region, welcome to the CFC. I hope you will embrace the opportunity it provides you, to support your favorite charity, or charities through the CFC, the federal government's annual charitable giving program.

As chair of the Gateway CFC Leadership Committee, I’m excited to donate my time, my energy and some of my dollars in a highly productive and efficient way that benefits many hundreds of charities. I'm honored to participate in the CFC because it helps so many others in our community—neighbors around the corner, country and world. I hope you will join me in supporting the 2009 CFC.

Please take a moment to look for organizations that are important to you in this Resource Guide, and remember how much you are Caring For our Communities. Let’s keep building on the Gateway Region’s great tradition of giving. Through easy and efficient payroll deduction, you can spread your contribution across the entire year.

With more than 2,800 charities on this year’s list, I think everyone will be able to find a program to care about. You can choose to:

  Give nurse check-ups to a home-bound neighbor
  Provide books for children
  Plant a tree
  Provide life-skills training for an adult with developmental disabilities
  Distribute food to hungry people
  Give shoes to needy children
  Fund research into cures for diseases
  Improve a public park
  Spay and neuter strays to slow pet overpopulation problems
  Purify water to give people clean water to drink
  Help fund a scholarship for higher education
  Deliver food and medical supplies to a refugee camp
  Give a family a goat, providing food and goods to take to the market
  Supply first-line antiretroviral medicines for people living with HIV/AIDS
  Provide lodging for cancer patients undergoing outpatient treatment
  Treat a person’s tuberculosis
  Enable elderly neighbors to receive physician’s visits

I hope you will consider the difference each donation to the CFC makes, and join me in helping reach our $3 million goal. Please take this opportunity to show how much you care for our community. Thank you,

James Page
Manager, Accounting Help Desk
U.S. Postal Service - Accounting Center Support
Chair, 2009-2010 Gateway Combined Federal Campaign
Leadership Committee