POULSBO — This is the season of giving, but the gratitude comes year-round.

“Throughout the year, people have told me, ‘Thanks for helping [the Poulsbo Lions/Raab Foundation] Bellringer Fund. It helped me out when I needed it,’” said Mike Brooks of Mike’s Car Wash & Detailing on 7th Avenue.

“My wife is involved at Fishline. She said [the Poulsbo Lions/Raab Foundation] Bellringer not only helps Fishline, it helps people who are having problems paying their rent or their energy bills. It could be your next-door neighbor. You never know.”

The annual Poulsbo Lions/Raab Foundation Bellringer Fund campaign has begun, and once again Mike’s Car Wash & Detailing is pledging to the fund a portion of proceeds from every car wash in November and December. The donation he makes the first week of January, at the conclusion of the campaign, can be sizable; it once put the Bellringer total over $40,000, which is believed to be a record for the fund.

Asked why the Poulsbo Lions/Raab Foundation Bellringer Fund is special to him — he’s been donating since 2001 — Brooks said, “It touches people locally. It doesn’t leave the community. Having been a Lion at one time, I know that organization does a lot of good for the community. I don’t have to worry about where the money’s going or how it’s being used. I feel good about it. It’s the right thing to do.”

Since its founding in the 1940s, the Poulsbo Lions/Raab Foundation Bellringer Fund has provided one way for neighbors to take of each other, particularly during winter when higher heating bills, whether electric or wood, can mean less money for food, rent and the holidays.

Each donation, from now to the New Year — no matter the size — helps ensure that needs unique to the winter season don’t fall through the cracks.

In 2013, North Kitsap residents donated $32,431 to the fund, said John S. Macdonald, a Poulsbo CPA and co-director of the fund. Of that, $5,815 ensured 100 local families were able to enjoy holiday meals at home. Another $26,000 was distributed to North Kitsap Fishline, ShareNet, and St. Vincent de Paul, to help 350-400 households pay their rents, energy bills, and meet emergency needs.

“We would love to have the same thing [happen] this year,” Macdonald said.

Donations to the Poulsbo Lions/Raab Foundation Bellringer Fund are tax-deductible. Donations can be mailed to P.O. Box 1244, Poulsbo, WA 98370. Donations to the fund are also being accepted at the North Kitsap Herald, 19351 8th Ave. NE, Poulsbo; and at Union Bank, 19950 7th Ave. NE, Poulsbo.

Any donation helps — children have brought in their piggy banks to the Herald’s front counter to give — because that donation and other donations will add up to provide a lot of help.

Macdonald said he and others involved with the fund are constantly looking for ways to make donations stretch. One change this year: Instead of volunteers filling Christmas dinner boxes for families to pick up at local stores this year, Fishline will use the funds to buy more goods using its volume-buying discount. Families that will participate in the holiday dinner program can then go to Fishline’s grocery store-like food bank on Viking Avenue and select the items they need for their holiday table.

Long history in Poulsbo
The Poulsbo Lions/Raab Foundation Bellringer Fund was founded in the 1940s by Frank and Mabel Raab. They lived their lives with so much energy, it seems, that the fund is still propelled by their forward motion six decades after they founded it.

If you know your Poulsbo history, then you know that Frank Raab served on the City Council from 1946-1960 and as mayor from 1961-69. Mabel Raab was as active as her husband, raising money to build the Sons of Norway’s Grieg Hall and to support Children’s Orthopedic Hospital, helping to found the Poulsbo Historical Society and the Poulsbo Yacht Club, and writing and directing plays to raise money for the early Miss Poulsbo pageants and the North Kitsap PTA Exchange Student Program.

During their lifetime, the fund was overseen by the Raab Foundation. Family members later asked the Poulsbo Lions Club, of which CPA Macdonald is a member, to administer the fund. Thus the name: the Poulsbo Lions/Raab Foundation Bellringer Fund. It is not related to the Bellringer Fund operated by the Kitsap Sun.

The spirit-of-giving bug has bitten Brooks, and hard. In addition to donating car wash proceeds to the Poulsbo Lions/Raab Foundation Bellringer Fund, Mike’s Car Wash & Detailing is collecting food and cash donations for Fishline through the end of the year.

“That way, we have a two-pronged effect this year,” Brooks said. “It’s a way to say ‘Thank you’ to the community.”