A Message from Our Executive Director About the Ledyard Bank Community Impact Awards

We wanted to share a message from our founder, Executive Director, and licensed massage therapist, Steve Gordon, about what receiving the top prize in the Ledyard Bank Community Impact Awards means to our organization. This recognition belongs to our entire community, and we’re so grateful to everyone who helped make it possible.

It was really wonderful to learn that The Hand to Heart Project was the top vote-getter in Ledyard National Bank’s community-support competition among six nonprofit organizations. The prize was a check for $15,000, which we will use to help us launch our program into its 20th year.

In celebration of Ledyard’s 35th anniversary, the bank decided to give away $35,000 to nonprofits through a Community Impact Awards event. People going into a Ledyard branch over the last five weeks or so could vote for their organization of choice, and thanks to our supporters and advocates, we were in the top spot for most of the event’s duration. That a modest-sized nonprofit such as ours could come out on top like this is a powerful statement about what we have achieved since our own founding 19 years ago.

There is another reason that this is a meaningful win for us, and it’s a wonderful bit of serendipity. One of the founders of Ledyard 35 years ago was Leo McKenna, a long-time Hanover business man and proud graduate of Dartmouth College. Leo, it turned out, was also a key player – arguably THE key player – in the founding of The Hand to Heart Project. He was the person who helped me take a vague idea for a service to help people with cancer and make it real. His financial support and connections were important; his guidance and counsel even more so. Leo also served on our board of directors for many years.

It seems so appropriate now for the bank he helped launch to be a source of significant source for a program that he loved and helped create. Heartfelt thanks to Ledyard, to our community of supporters, and to my friend, Leo McKenna.

-Steve