Lincoln Park, Chicago — The Lincoln Park Trixie Society today announced the launch of The LPTS Penny Campaign, a Society-wide initiative inviting Members in good standing to contribute their loose pennies toward the Village Legacy Fund, administered by the LPTS Foundation. Proceeds underwrite the creation of new shopping districts and big-box retail opportunities; new restaurants, bars, and streetside cafés; additional Starbucks locations; the upkeep of the Village's streets, medians, and seasonal plantings; and the cultivation of new Trixies.
The Campaign was introduced by Founder and Executive Director Dr. Ashley Munroe, LPT, PhD. “I found enough pennies in the car to fill a coffee cup,” she said. “If everyone checks the same places, we should be able to do something very nice for the medians.”
Participation is straightforward. Members are asked to designate a household vessel — a dish, a drawer, a repurposed cup — as a Campaign vessel, and to deposit pennies as they accumulate. Collected copper is brought to any of the Society's designated counting stations, where it is sorted, weighed, and recorded by volunteers from the Standards Committee.
“People hear ‘pennies’ and assume we are being whimsical,” said Caroline Vance-Whittaker, Treasurer and Chair of the LPTS Foundation. “We are not. The Village Legacy Fund is a real endowment with real line items. A streetside café does not appear because the neighborhood wished for it, and a Starbucks is not willed into being by sentiment. The Penny Campaign is how we fund the Village we intend to have.”
To date, the Campaign reports 1,114,206 pennies collected — a figure the Foundation prefers to state in copper rather than dollars. According to the Society's Office of Society Intelligence, that sum, laid edge to edge, would line both sides of Armitage Avenue approximately 1.4 times; stacked, it would stand taller than the Lincoln Park apartment in which the Society was founded by a multiple the Office “declines, on principle, to round.”
“The numbers are encouraging and, in places, alarming,” said Vivienne “Viv” Ashford-Crane, Director of Society Intelligence. “Ninety-four percent of surveyed Members agree the Village should remain ‘aspirational but walkable.’ One in three Members has converted a coin dish into a Campaign vessel. The average donation weighs 14.7 grams and arrives, more often than we would prefer, in a repurposed Starbucks cup. We are monitoring that final figure closely.”
The Society notes that the Campaign carries no minimum contribution and no upper limit, and that pennies remain, for the moment, legal tender. “Small change. Big impact,” Dr. Munroe added. “We have put it on a bucket. We mean it.”
Members may bring their pennies in any convenient container. Please empty it of receipts before handing it to a volunteer.
The Foundation will report the next collection total after the counting stations have submitted their figures.