The Beehive Collective is a collaborative group of primariy young women that reside in the Raleigh area. They are organized to provide funding and support to causes important to their membership. Two of their members visited us today as a part of their Economic Security in Raleigh grant cycle.

We recognize that these members also have regular jobs that they must take time away from in order to visit our organization and others like us. We want to thank them for their time and hope that our community programs will be a great match for meeting their outreach goals.

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Here is more information on The Beehive Collective.

We have experienced modest growth and increasing requests for assistance over the years. One of our greatest awards was being recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-exempt nonprofit charity. This cleared the way for us to receive tax-deductible donations.

Our fourth year begins with two new planned program additions:

Reverse Mortgage Counseling

The staff at Vision Credit is in the midst of applying for HUD certification. This will allow us to serve additional homeownership needs of our clients.

Reverse Mortgage certificates are needed by a rapidly growing population of seniors that need additional monthly income. We also want to be able to help the aging baby boomers that are beginning to retire.

It is expected that our referrals will increase substantially. However, we also are planning for increased contributions to cover the cost of expanding our housing counseling program to include reverse mortgage counseling.

Debt Management Program

Our debt counseling program has provided referrals to outside agencies that provide debt management programs. We have provided debt counseling services since inception, but have not conducted our own debt management program.

Our Directors have examined proposals from potential nonprofit partners that could allow us to add this needed service. We anticipate that we will have this program ready before the end of 2008.

While this program will be a small part of our operations, it will help our clients stay connected with us on a long-term basis. This will provide additional counseling opportunities and improve consumer behaviors for more clients.

Thank you to everyone that has made our programs possible. We are looking forward to an even better year ahead!