For the youth who spend their afternoons at Wesley-Rankin Community Center in Dallas, activity space is scarce. Soon that will change. A $50,000 matching grant from Texas Methodist Foundation has triggered an avalanche of support for expanding the current youth building.

Sarah Wilke, executive director of Wesley-Rankin Community Center, said the community responded enthusiastically to the challenge, raising the equivalent amount by March 3, 27 days before the cut-off date.

“People love deadlines,” Wilke says. “But what we love even more are dollar to dollar matches because they give us a sense that our investment grows immediately upon arrival.”

The suggestion that the Foundation challenge the Center with raising the funds to match the gift came from the anonymous benefactor who established the donor-advised fund from which the grant was made.

While the Center offers programming for all age groups, the money is being applied toward the expansion of the Center’s youth building. With the recent challenge grant met, the Center has now raised $205,000, bringing it much closer to its $410,000 goal. “Our campus is so full with other activities that we haven’t had a space specifically designed for youth,” Wilke says. “Youth need their own space.”

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