West Side Nut Club Donates Over $100K to 25 Evansville Area Organizations

For just over 100 years, Franklin Street on Evansville's west side becomes the place to be as the West Side Nut Club hosts its annual Fall Festival during the first full week of October. Over the course of six days, thousands upon thousands of people converge on the stretch of Franklin Street between St. Joe and Wabash Avenue of Flags to enjoy a variety of food items cooked up by hundreds of non-profits from the area as well as play carnival games, ride rides in the midway, enjoy live entertainment, and more. While the goal of the festival is for everyone to have a good time, its purpose is to help the Nut Club provide grants to local non-profit organizations, which they did Tuesday evening with the announcement they would be donating over $100,000 to 25 local organizations.

The announcement, posted on the Club's Facebook page, stated they voted to donate a total of $100,100 to organizations such as the Evansville Wartime Museum, ECHO Housing, Jacob's Village, Lampion Center, Evansville Association for the Blind, and more, bringing the grand total donated so far this year to an astonishing $555,700.

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There's no doubt this amount of money would be possible if it weren't for the addition of the Fall Festival Half Pot drawing a few years ago. Thanks to the incredible response to the drawing from the public each year, the Club has been able to spread the wealth to more organizations than ever before. At last year's Founder's Day Dinner, the annual event where they physically hand out checks from the money raised by the Festival, they announced were able to give money to every single school within the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation for the first time ever.

The Club is continuously accepting applications for grants. If you or someone you know is a member of a non-profit organization, school, or church group, and would like to apply, visit the Club's Funding Request page to fill out the online form.

[Source: West Side Nut Club on Facebook]