Novant Health unsung heroes inspire gift to aid COVID-19 response

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The Good Fellows Club contributes $50K to help those who keep our facilities safe

For the past century, The Good Fellows Club has provided working families with emergency assistance — help with rent and utilities when those families find themselves struggling to make ends meet.

Most years, the club’s 1,800 members contribute some $900,000 to that work. This year, with a global pandemic bearing down on our community, they wanted to give more, said Stick Williams, a former Duke Energy executive and president of the club’s board of directors.

To that end, The Good Fellows Club recently made a $50,000 gift to the Novant Health COVID-19 Disaster Relief Fund to support front-line clinical and environmental services team members. That includes not just those actively fighting COVID-19, but those who do the critical, behind-the-scenes work of keeping our healthcare facilities up and running every single day.

“Even in normal times, we take for granted that our healthcare facilities are going to be clean and sterile. We take for granted that the needs of all patients are going to be taken care of. We’re not mindful of everything that needs to happen to make sure we can have the best healthcare in the world,” Williams said. “It takes people to do that. It takes people to do every phase of work to have the facilities and the equipment we need and that hand that comforts us and encourages us. COVID-19 has highlighted just how incredible the people are who care for us day in and day out. So what an honor it is for us to recognize them and to provide these dollars for their care.”

These families may be under increased financial pressures as the coronavirus continues to impact our community, Williams noted. While there have been sweeping moratoriums on evictions and the shutdown of utilities, that relief is only temporary.

“We know that once the community opens up again and those moratoriums end, there’s going to be a deluge of need,” he said.

The $50,000 donation will go toward helping with rent, housing or other pressing financial needs. The Good Fellows Club is also pulling together a pool of volunteers to help determine who to support and how to provide this care through the pandemic and beyond, Williams said.

“There is nothing that compares to COVID-19 and the impact. I’ve never seen anything like this,” Williams said. “Businesses were strong. They were profitable. They just had to close. And now all of a sudden, all these people are out of work. You just don’t turn the switch on and everything goes back to normal.”

Among the members of The Good Fellows Club, that’s what resonated most about this effort, which is part of a $100,000 gift across both major health systems in Charlotte. The organization was founded to help those who have fallen on hard times find solid footing again.

“This gift was right up our alley. Those environmental service workers, those who cook and so forth, they’re struggling during this period of time,” Williams said. “I’ve never been so proud to be a Good Fellow.”

In recent weeks, Williams has seen other powerful examples of leadership throughout the Charlotte community, with people and organizations rising to meet the needs of those hit hardest by this pandemic.

To get through this, we’ll need to see more individuals and organizations step up. 

“We recognize that nothing compares with the impacts we’re seeing with this pandemic. That means every sector of this community will have to extend Herculean efforts to get us back to where we were,” Williams said. “Everybody’s going to have to eat that can of spinach and find amazing strength to do everything we can to get us back to where we were.”