St. John Neuman Knights in West Lake Hills

St. John Neuman Knights in West Lake Hills TX engage in raising funds for a new ultrasound machine for The John Paul II Life Center (JPII) in Austin TX.

The ultrasound fundraiser project began after Tim Von Dohlen — original founder of JPII Life Center— approached the Knights at our council for assistance. It was an easy yes for us.

Initially, I received a call from Tim with some details as to the need for the ultrasound machine.

Knowing that our greater Knights organization has an ultrasound initiative where Supreme has a 50% price match If a Council raises 50% of the cost of a new ultrasound.

It was an immediate yes from me too.

So Immediately after that initial conversation I called our treasurer (Robert Donathan) financial secretary (Joe Kupper) and Director of Communications (Lee Latimer) to create the accounting, webpage, and financial tracking we would need.

It was an easy decision for our council to accept this work. I appointed brother Knight Tom Prevost as Committee Chair to our Ultrasound Fundraising committee. He has done great job for our council in this position.

Tom and I decided we needed an educational component to go hand in hand with our fundraiser. So we began working with key JP II Life Center Staff to put that in place by utilizing one of their educational components “A Glimpse Inside”©️.

As we progressed Tom pulled in key people from our St. John Neumann office staff to help with scheduling and communications utilizing announcements, bulletin and the parish newsletter. He also worked with our Director of Life programs (Rick Ebert) to connect with his wider network.

We scheduled our educational/fundraising event to be held after our 9 AM and 11 AM masses on July 25th.

I pulled together a cooking team for that event led by brother Knights David Dawkins and Joe Kupper.

We designed the event so that the knights would book end the program. Tom appointed me to open the event with introductions and then hand off to the JPII program “A Glimpse Inside” ©️ then after questions and answers I was asked back on stage to go over the fundraising objective ending with brother Knight Chuck Malburg. Chuck capped off the event by connecting the Fundraiser with our Knights history of charity and our Greater organizations Ultrasound Initiative successes. Since it’s launch in 2009 the Knights of Columbus Ultrasound Initiative has since placed more than 1,330 life-saving ultrasound machines in pregnancy centers nationwide. I like to call that “The Supreme Match”.

It was a wonderful day and we reached our Financial goal to receive the match from Supreme. We are in the process of filling out the remaining paper work to receive the match and send all the funds to the JPII Life Center so they can take ownership and delivery of their new Ultrasound machine and help our community.