ChildServe Champions Named

ChildServe Champions Named to Celebrate Millions Donated, Thousands of Lives Impacted

ChildServe’s long-time donors Variety – the Children’s Charity and Peggy Fisher and Larry Stelter fuel unparalleled growth, help provide more options for families in Iowa.

ChildServe recently named Variety – the Children’s Charity and Peggy Fisher and Larry Stelter as ChildServe Champions. This award recognizes our most devoted supporters for advancing ChildServe’s mission through generosity, service and inspiring others to action. These awards were given at our annual meeting, where the $10 million “Forward Together” Campaign was also announced.

Variety & ChildServe: 40 Years of Life-changing Partnership

Since 1979, Variety – the Children’s Charity of Iowa has forged a remarkable relationship with ChildServe. The missions of both organizations are closely aligned, and this positive alliance has resulted in significant growth in the number of children with special healthcare needs being served in central Iowa.

Variety has played a major role in every capital campaign and expansion of services to increase ChildServe’s capacity to serve more children. They are ChildServe’s largest cumulative donor.

“The number of children being served at ChildServe has soared from less than 100 when our partnership began to more than 4,500 in 2018,” says Vice President of Development, Mark Gambaiana. “This growth was made possible by Variety’s incredible support, which has benefitted our long-term care units, behavioral health and autism programs, and recently helped provide new imaging equipment.”

Variety’s support also enabled ChildServe to:

Double outpatient therapy space to now provide over 100,000 therapy appointments to more than 2,000 children annually.
Launch the Variety Club ChildServe Center in Ames, which served 639 children from Story County and beyond in 2018.
Build six ChildServe group homes and establish a central campus for non-residential services.
Make use of numerous vans and coaches that allow kids with special healthcare needs, many of whom live in homes built with Variety grant money, to get out and participate in their communities.

Peggy Fisher and Larry Stelter

Few donors have made such a lasting impact at ChildServe as Peggy Fisher and Larry Stelter.

The couple rank as ChildServe’s second-largest cumulative donors with a remarkable history of gift support across three campaigns to impact children across the state. Employees from the three-generation family business, The Stelter Company, have made additional contributions to ChildServe in honor of Peggy and Larry.

“Over the past 20 years, Peggy and Larry have made giving to ChildServe a priority,” says Vice President of Development, Mark Gambaiana. “Their investment has helped fuel unparalleled growth in the organization’s programs, services, and number of children with special healthcare needs receiving care. Larry’s faithful service of more than 10 years on ChildServe’s Board of Trustees has helped us continue to impact the lives of children during times of uncertainty.”

Peggy Fisher’s and Larry Stelter’s incredible generosity has helped to:

Create Iowa’s only comprehensive inpatient rehabilitation program designed exclusively for children and teens.
Double outpatient therapy space to now provide over 100,000 therapy appointments to more than 2,000 children annually.
Start a new autism program, including one-of-a-kind services like Autism Day Health.

Peggy and Larry have also provided a leadership gift to ChildServe’s Forward Together Campaign, which will launch a behavioral health clinic, build a new pediatric inpatient rehabilitation unit that will serve over 2,000 kids in the next 10 years, and provide specialized 24/7 nursing care for the growing population of individuals who previously would have aged out of services at ChildServe with few, if any appropriate placement options for their level of medical complexity.

About

ChildServe improves the health and well-being of nearly 5,800 children each year through specialized clinical, home, and community-based programs and services. We serve children with developmental delays, disabilities, injuries, and other special healthcare needs.