Whether or not they enjoy the New Radicals’ 1998 hit single, the four Berks Countians profiled in this package would all wholeheartedly agree with the earworm’s message: You get what you give. All strong proponents of the benefits of service, they represent the best of the area’s collegial spirit – and those who live here are lucky they call this place home.
Meggan Kerber
A Life Filled With Philanthropy
Meggan Kerber made a name for herself as a fundraising expert, so much so that one of the county’s fundraising awards now bears her name.
She also seemingly found a way to bend the space-time continuum to allow for more than 24 hours in a day. At one point in her career, she sat on eight boards while working full time.
That was the apex of her community involvement, and she soon realized, “Girl, you can’t do this.” But even after reining it in, she continues to be overly generous with her time and talents, serving or having served on more than a dozen boards and as a professional fundraising counsel for Pennsylvania nonprofits, with most of the work done pro bono.
“I pick things that are important to me for specific reasons,” Kerber says. “It's not just to give back but to pay it forward.”
Her career has come full circle with Kerber returning to help lead the department in which she began her fundraising journey three decades prior. Needing financial support while an undergrad at Alvernia University — then known as Alvernia College — in the early ’90s, she landed a job with the Institutional Advancement office. Her maiden steps into fundraising were the footsteps she took down Lancaster Avenue asking for gifts to support students.
After a subsequent trek through the nonprofit and corporate world — which included serving as executive director of Berks Arts Council along with stints at Bethany Children’s Home, Olivet Boys & Girls Club, Girl Scouts-Great Valley and Penn State Berks — she returned to her alma mater. Since 2021, she has served as the associate vice president of institutional advancement at Alvernia.
It's been quite the transformation for the self-described introvert who wanted to become a child psychologist.
“Who goes to college saying I want to be a fundraiser?” says Kerber, who received Alvernia’s Ellen Frei Gruber Distinguished Alumni Award in 2014. “Let alone the girl who grew up not talking to anybody, to now being out as a face in the community. It’s pretty awesome when you think about it.”
"It's not just to give back but to pay it forward."
In 2018, the Berks Regional Chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals — an organization birthed by Kerber and a few associates while driving back home from an AFP Conference in Baltimore — recognized her by changing the name of its Outstanding Fundraising Professional Award to the Meggan Kerber Outstanding Fundraising Professional Award.
As she continues on her most unexpected journey, she also continues to battle misconceptions about fundraising, chief among them that only big gifts make a difference and that philanthropy is solely about money.
“Every gift makes a difference,” she says. “It doesn't matter if it's a dollar, that gift is meaningful to the individual who is giving it and to the person who is receiving it. And many people think philanthropy is just about money when it truly is about service: your time, your talent. I hear so many times, ‘Well, what I do doesn't make a difference.’ It all makes a difference. You may not always see it right away, but you will. You'll see that impact.”
Freddy Vasquez
Saying Thank you To The Universe
A circuitous excursion led Freddy Vasquez to the region, but he’s grateful he ended up here. So are his fellow Berks Countians.
Originally from New York City, where he got his start professionally making Myspace pages for fellow metal bands, he and his family moved to Florida for a job that lasted all of two weeks before the business closed. In 2009, they moved to Wyomissing, which they loved for its quaintness and its proximity to family and friends in New York.
In 2012, Vazquez founded the digital marketing agency FXV Digital Design. Years of successful networking allowed him to purchase the Wyomissing building in which it resides in 2019. That led to an epiphany, which led to the Awesome Toy Drive.
“The holidays came and I'm like, you know what, you’ve got to give back,” the 45 year old says. “You have enough business that you were able to purchase a building on Penn Avenue. What are you doing to say thank you to the universe?”
His solution was to start a small toy drive. The children-focused nonprofit CONCERN was in one of his networking groups, so he reached out for a list of kids. He made 20 paper ornaments, putting one child’s name on each, and hung them on a Christmas tree in his office. He hoped 20 customers would pick an ornament and buy a gift for that child before the holiday season ended. Feeling nervous about hitting the goal, he and wife Jill — “I couldn't have done any of this without her,” Vasquez says — bought one each for themselves and their two daughters. After he posted a video on Facebook explaining the drive, the ornaments disappeared in a matter of hours.
But because “as my wife says all the time, you're so freaking extra,” he didn’t feel satisfied with hitting his initial goal. So he asked CONCERN for 20 more names. Those ornaments were also snapped up quickly. So he asked for 40 more. By the end of the season, toys were purchased for 150 children
After the first year, he enlisted the help of local business owners, who allowed Vasquez to place ornament-filled trees in their places of business. The following year, more than 600 children received gifts. In the third year, the number topped 1,300. Today, nearly three dozen local businesses assist in the Awesome Toy Drive, which has expanded to help additional nonprofits.
And because he’s so extra, Vasquez also dresses as Santa for special-needs kids and assists with Baseballtown Charities’ Dream League, which gives children with physical and mental disabilities the chance to play baseball.
His overflowing spirit of service bleeds into his business as well. FXV Digital Design employees are expected to do community work, which includes helping with the toy drive. He made that stipulation because he wants his workers to see how fulfilling it is to serve.
“I'm all about giving back, dude,” he says. “There's no way that you can be this successful in a place you're not from and not give back. You have to support your community to say thank you. And if you help kids have better lives, they grow up to be better people. You're investing in the future. And I’ll do that every day until I’m dead.”
"You're investing in the future. And I’ll do that every day until I’m dead."
Heather Brady
Giving a Big Boost to Small Businesses
Their businesses may be small, but their influence on Heather Brady is enormous.
“Small business owners are my heroes,” says the founder of Do It Local Berks, which supports locally owned businesses through collaborations with organizations, charities and neighborhoods.
After years of working in the advertising industry, Brady became a mom and decided to work for herself, giving her more time to spend with her little ones.
Her first project was converting about three dozen of Berks County Realtors Association’s unused Real Estate Weekly boxes into Kids Bookshare Boxes where children can drop off old books and pick up new ones. She partnered with sponsors to clean them up, get new decals and place them at locally owned businesses frequented by families.
Then COVID hit.
“Restaurants came up to me and said: ‘We’re not allowed to be open, and we have bills to pay. What are we going to do?’” the 40-year-old Mohnton resident remembers. “So we put together meal pop-ups.”
At those events, neighborhoods picked a restaurant from an e-commerce site set up by Brady, then selected a day and brief window of time for the establishment to deliver the food curbside.
As things started to re-open, the concept was tweaked. Today, the pop-ups function as fundraisers with a percentage of the proceeds going to organizations, about 200 of which utilize the events. Six restaurants participate in the fundraisers, and Brady hopes to add a few more to the mix.
“It’s for the community,” she says. “When we’re all winning, great things can happen.”
Brady’s selflessness has inspired others to follow in her footsteps, including in her own home.
Two years ago, her oldest son, Colton, won a Sun-Maid Raisins national contest. Along with $5,000 for his Governor Mifflin elementary school to utilize, the victory came with a bottomless snack locker for a year.
But the 9-year-old also has friends in Mifflin’s other elementary schools, and he wanted them to be able to enjoy the snacks. He and his mother brainstormed, and Raisin Kindness was born.
It wasn’t financially feasible to provide bottomless snack lockers for all the classrooms, so they compromised on snack bins. Then PTOs from districts across the county got wind of things and expressed interest. To deal with the high demand, Heather and Colton created checklists of kind acts that could be turned in for points. The classrooms that completed the most acts of kindness were rewarded.
"When we’re all winning, great things can happen."
The 2023-24 school year is the second for Raisin Kindness, aided by donations from local businesses and a $1,000 check given to Colton by the Association of Fundraising Professionals after he won Youth Philanthropist of the Year for Berks County. Brady wants the program to continue and expand, but continued donations are needed along with assistance from students interested in bringing it to their schools.
Brady is thrilled that her generosity has inspired Colton and that her oldest son’s good deeds are making a huge impact on his little brother.
“Connor is Colton’s biggest cheerleader,” Brady says. “His dream is to be the next Raisin Kindness kid. It’s cool to see how the project has created this bond between them. But it’s also a glimpse of what could be for other kids. He’s five and he gets it.”
Chris Spohn
Veteran Looks Out For Those At Risk
After spending 26 years in the Army, Chris Spohn retired from the military in 2012. But his service was far from over.
Most of Spohn’s time in the armed forces was spent in the Army Reserve, save for a stretch from 2003 to 2005 when he was deployed in the Middle East, serving as an engineer. Before, during and after his time in the military, he taught, coached and held administrative roles at multiple Berks school districts.
When his time in the military was over, he felt a sense of loss because it was so much of his identity. So he looked for ways to continue to serve. He discovered the Veterans Coalition of Pennsylvania through Stand Down City Park, its monthly gathering in Reading that provides food, clothes, blankets and camaraderie for veterans in need.
It's one of many things keeping him busy since he formally retired from the workforce.
“I say I’m retired,” the 57-year-old Muhlenberg Township resident says. “‘My wife says, ‘No, you’re not.’”
His wife is correct.
Along with volunteering with Christ Episcopal Church as the chairman of the property committee and contracting with Reading School District to provide opportunities for kids in danger of failing to graduate, he works with the Veterans Coalition, which partners with government agencies and organizations to assist veterans with life outside of the military.
"We love to be able to help each other out."
“There is an unfortunate perception that every veteran is broken, and that’s not at all accurate,” he says. “There are folks who have gone through some specific issues emotionally and physically, but there are a lot of us who have a range of abilities, and we love to be able to help each other out.”
The Veterans Coalition serves its mission through four lines of operation:
• Stand Down events: Held the second Saturday of each month in Reading and the fourth Saturday of the month in Pottstown, the gatherings address basic human needs.
• An infoline: Filling in the gaps between Stand Down events, this phoneline allows veterans to call and ask for assistance.
• Medical transport: The group takes any veteran to any appointment for free throughout southeastern Pennsylvania and outside of that radius on occasion.
• Bridge housing: A house in the Lower Alsace Township area bequeathed from a previous client will become the Neil Kauffman Veterans Center, a place to get veterans off the street.
It’s a significant undertaking. But Spohn believes better coordination could help the organization assist many more at-risk veterans.
“One of the biggest frustrations is that we don’t have access to the people coming off of active duty to use the amazing resources that are available throughout the county,” he says. “There is CareerLink for jobs. Alvernia University has an amazing veterans’ outreach program. RACC is great with their technical skills. But we have no way to access folks before they get into trouble. That’s a battle we’re trying to resolve right now.”
