mobile logo
513-562-8841    Contact Us
title image

Upward Spiral

THANK YOU!!

For more than 150 years, we’ve been a source of hope and help that people count on. As the community’s needs have changed, so have we. Three years ago, we felt compelled to continue our evolution by building a new outreach center that would allow us to have the greatest impact on our neighbors. And with your help, we did it. In November 2019, we officially opened the Don and Phyllis Neyer Outreach Center, while also endowing our Conference Assistance Fund so our Conferences can have a greater impact within each individual neighborhood. By your supporting the Upward Spiral Comprehensive Campaign, we are now poised to make a difference in the lives of our neighbors for the next 150 years.

Letter from the Co-Chairs

Dear Friends,

Both of us have been blessed to be involved at St. Vincent de Paul – Cincinnati for years. We have distributed Thanksgiving meals together, led Board meetings, celebrated special events and visited our neighbors in their homes, to mention a few of our wonderful experiences. We cherish countless special memories from those experiences. But throughout our time, we have also experienced moments of hopelessness. We have seen firsthand just how great the need is in our community, as demonstrated by long lines of neighbors stretched out the door and down the street on cold winter mornings, waiting to access services at SVDP.

When moments of hopelessness do arise, it is generous people like you who consistently restore our hope. In 2016, SVDP decided to expand access to its services through the $12 million Upward Spiral Comprehensive Campaign. This would be accomplished through the construction of a new outreach center in the West End allowing us to offer all of our core services to neighbors simultaneously, six days a week. Additionally, neighbor-to-neighbor support in more than 70 Greater Cincinnati neighborhoods was to be increased by providing financial assistance to SVDP’s Conferences through our Conference Assistance Fund.

Well, the great news is that 402 people like you made donations ranging from $4 to $1 million to make the $12 million Upward Spiral Comprehensive Campaign a reality. We surpassed the $12 million goal in December. We also celebrated the grand opening of our new Don and Phyllis Neyer Outreach Center on November 8, and the Ed and Joann Hubert Family Conference Assistance Fund has been established. Of all we have experienced together at SVDP, witnessing your generosity has been one of the greatest gifts. We are grateful for your involvement in this historic effort.

Thank you for learning about our neighbors’ needs, for understanding how SVDP helps meet those needs and for responding so generously to our requests for your support. You have made our services more accessible for our neighbors, you have helped build a beautiful space that reminds our neighbors of their inherent dignity, and you have empowered Vincentians with the resources needed to respond to more neighbors.

Most importantly, thank you for believing, along with us, that through this effort, we all can move upward together. We are proud to share more about what you have helped accomplish through the Upward Spiral Comprehensive Campaign in the pages that follow.

This year marks the beginning of a new era of service for SVDP. Your support of our work and faith in our mission are what got us here. Thank you for your generous extension of compassion and care to our neighbors in need

Becky Catino and Bart Kohler
Upward Spiral Co-Chairs

Your Support in Action

On a cold Tuesday morning in November, Evelyn walked into the Don and Phyllis Neyer Outreach Center asking for help from the pharmacy.

A clear hose looped under her nose and behind her ears, connecting to a nearly empty oxygen tank she borrowed from a friend. She was having trouble breathing, she told the pharmacist, but recently lost her job and had no income to afford her inhaler co-pays. Without hesitation, the pharmacy filled her rescue inhaler prescription and got her an appointment with a free on-site medical facility.

Overcome with joy, she started crying. Her life, she said, was saved. A month earlier, the outcome wouldn’t have been the same. Until the opening of the Neyer Outreach Center in October 2019, the pharmacy wasn’t open on Tuesdays. Space constraints in the old building forced it to limit its hours, meaning no one would have been there to help Evelyn. Instead of receiving a new inhaler and medical care, she would have been sent to the emergency room.

It didn’t take long for the Center to make a truly meaningful impact on our neighbors’ lives, which was a key promise of the Upward Spiral Comprehensive Campaign.

In addition to being open, the pharmacy now sits next to other service areas, like homelessness prevention and the food pantry, encouraging neighbors to get holistic care.

With its expanded space and additional hours of operation, the pharmacy immediately reduced the amount of time a neighbor has to wait to schedule an appointment, set a record for the number of prescriptions it fills in a month and saw a 13 percent increase in patient certifications.

You impacted the lives of neighbors like Evelyn through your generous support of the Upward Spiral Campaign.