After 96 years of community service, the local Order of the Eastern Star Lily of the Valley chapter is shuttering its operations, but not without ensuring its legacy will live on.
The local chapter has made consistent donations to local charitable causes over the past century, and on Wednesday afternoon it presented Mariposa House Hospice with a $25,000 donation at the Best Western Plus Mariposa Inn and Conference Centre in Orillia.
With dwindling membership and aging members, including some who have been with the chapter for more than 50 years, the group has decided to amalgamate with its Midland counterpart.
“We have money that we’ve saved over the last 90-plus years … if the time should ever come that we wanted to do something special. The time has come,” said chapter worthy matron Jackie Deverell.
The donation will be used as seed money for an endowment fund that will provide the hospice with recurring annual funding, which will be managed by the Community Foundation of Orillia and Area.
At $25,000, the hospice will receive roughly $1,250 from its endowment fund every year.
“Thank you so much for … (selecting) us as the recipient for this incredibly generous donation,” said hospice board president Dave Carson. “We’re approaching around 200 client families so far to benefit from the caring work that we have in the house hospice, so this seeding of the foundation will carry on helping us to provide that excellent level of care.”
The five-bed hospice on Brodie Drive in Severn Township relies on raising $800,000 annually to meet its budget and provide end-of-life care to its clients, said hospice executive director Annalise Stenekes.
As a newer charity, Stenekes said, building an endowment fund was something the hospice would not have been able to do alone in the near future.
“We weren’t going to be able to create an endowment fund ourselves right away,” she said. “Enter the Lily of the Valley chapter. They’re going through something difficult and sad in closing their chapter, and they’re turning that into something very positive and long lasting.
“They’re doing what we otherwise would not have been able to do ourselves.”
Stenekes said potential donors may add to the endowment fund’s principal, which will increase the yearly dividend paid out to the hospice.
With more than 4,500 members spread across dozens of chapters in Ontario, the Order of the Eastern Star is a fraternal order that includes Master Masons and their female relatives among its membership.
The order espouses a philosophy based on fidelity, constancy, loyalty, faith, love and charity, and the local chapter has organized fundraisers, bazaars, banquets and weddings in its efforts to aid charitable causes in the community over the years.
