Creative energy, at times, seems to generate more ideas for local businesswoman Constance Wolfe than she can keep track of.
'Independents Day'
When: 4 p.m. Sunday.
Where: Watson Park, between Sixth and Eighth streets and Kentucky and Tennessee streets.
What: Food from Lawrence Originals. Twenty local restaurants — the “Independents” — will offer smaller portions of their food at lowered prices.
Live music from The Alferd Packer Memorial String Band, Lance Fahy, The Electric Limes, and Billy Ebeling and the Late for Dinner Band will be performed from 4:10 p.m. until 8:30 p.m.
Fireworks: The Lawrence Jaycees will start the 45-minute display at 9:45 p.m.
For kids: A bounce house, face painting, duck fishing pond, three-legged races.
Seventh Street will be closed between Kentucky and Tennessee streets during the celebration.
She has ideas to help increase charitable contributions to non-profits, improve local businesses and even help with funding shortfalls in Lawrence schools.
Wolfe, 41, established and operates a network of local restaurants — a group called the Lawrence Originals. In addition, she heads up the Lawrence Give Back program, the Lawrence Fireworks Festival, and she’s put her ideas to work for the benefit of local businesses and the Lawrence community.
Under the Give Back Program, which she started in 2009, local shoppers help generate charitable donations to local organizations when they use a card at local businesses. It has raised about $75,000 for area non-profits.
“It’s really easy to convince people to take a card and use it,” said Lori Harse, director of operations for the Lawrence Habitat or Humanity, one of about 100 non-profits that receives funding from the program.
Harse said she appreciates Wolfe’s outside-the-box thinking.
“She’s got a lot of creativity,” Harse said.
Using that creativity to increase local business, while helping the community, is at the heart of Wolfe’s life ambition.
For instance, at the Fourth of July event she’s planning for the second year with the Lawrence Originals in Watson Park, revenue and booth fees from area businesses will help fund the fireworks show.
“It’s just the passion that I have,” said Wolfe, a Lawrence High graduate and Lawrence native.
Wolfe said working with businesses is easy for her because she understands the needs of small businesses. Wolfe’s mother founded the local bed and breakfast, the Halcyon House, in 1985. Wolfe left the area in 1986, received a political science degree at the University of California at San Diego, but came back to her hometown in 1995 to help her mother run the business.
Though she says she has yet to pay herself, the Give Back program is a for-profit marketing business, and she has hopes to expand the business in the coming years. Her goal is to someday generate more than $200,000 annually for local charities, while also being able to hire staff and make a living through the work.
But it’s really about an investment in the community she grew up in, she said.
Wolfe and her husband, John Novosel, have a 3-year-old daughter, Chloe, who in a couple years will enter the Lawrence public school system. Wolfe gets particularly fired up when talking about cuts to local school funding.
Which of course, generates more local business community problem-solving ideas for Wolfe.
The wheels start turning in Wolfe’s head as she talks about her continuing mission to get Lawrence residents to spend their money locally, thus generating more tax dollars for local schools.
“Imagine if they (Lawrence public schools) got behind this,” Wolfe said.
She doesn’t have a creative formal plan yet to increase funding for area schools, but if her past success is an indication, she might have one soon.
Comments
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abcd (Raymond Munoz) says…
The Lawrence Give Back program is amazing! It helps out organizations like ours, and you also get a rebate at local merchants after spending a certain amount. We've got quite a few cards available here at the Douglas County Dental Clinic if anybody would like one, and we'll even help you setup your account!
jchristine2 (anonymous) says…
I use my Lawrence Give Back Card all the time. My charity of choice is the Lawrence Humane Society. But, its great that people can choose which business they want to help out. All local business deserve a boost!