Lodge Donates $111,990 to My People Fund
On Monday, January 23, Lodge presented a check for $111,990 to The Dollywood Foundation’s My People Fund, which supports families affected by the Tennessee wildfires. Lodge raised the money through the sale of our limited edition 2016 Great Smoky Mountains cast iron skillet both online and in its two factory stores in Pigeon Forge and Sevierville. The skillets sold for $30 each, half of which we donated directly to the My People Fund.
Lodge CEO Henry Lodge, along with Lodge employee Dick Reeves, who lost his own home in the wildfire in late November, presented the check to David Dotson, president of The Dollywood Foundation. The ceremony took place inside Lodge’s Factory Store in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
Each year, Lodge creates a special skillet with the Great Smoky Mountains logo on it and sells it exclusively at the two factory stores in Pigeon Forge and Sevierville, Tennessee. Due to the devastating wildfires in neighboring town Gatlinburg in late November 2016, we decided to make the skillet available for sale on our website for a limited time and donate $15 from the purchase of each skillet directly to The Dollywood Foundation"s My People Fund, which gives money directly to families affected by the wildfires.
After only four and a half hours online on Monday, December 12, we sold out of the Great Smoky Mountains skillet on our website and quickly raised thousands of dollars for families impacted by the wildfires. We were so impressed by the support and experienced such an enormous amount of requests to make more skillets that we rearranged our production schedule the very next day to make more. Ten days later, we had raised over $100,000 for families in need.
