Autumn, wine, a festival, and food were the winning ingredients cooked up by Martin for this year’s ENF Month fundraiser. He and members of his Lodge embarked on a bus trip visiting three wineries, a fall festival and capping the trip off with dinner. Calls from other Lodges in the area have already started flooding in, asking him to invite them along next year. “Everyone had a great time and wanted to know if I would do it again next year,” he says.

Marvin says the key to an effective fundraiser is to select an event that will bring together members of the Lodge for a good time and a great cause. “If the social aspect is a success, the financial benefit will come, if not this time than next,” he says.

Coming from a small Lodge, Martin credits his success as ENF Chair to the quality of Islip’s members over the quantity. His Lodge has had the highest per-member giving in NY for 15 of the past 16 years, proving that, as Martin says, “Islip is a small Lodge but has the heart as big as ENF itself.”