Donations

As a 501C3 organization that assists the National Weather Service during severe weather and also provides additional communications capabilities to our First Responders, your donations, of any amount, help us to maintain and/or enhance club owned equipment. An example would be to help fund adding a digital mode to the repeater (e.g. AllStar).

If you are interested in helping us with a tax deductible donation, please click the button below.

Thank you.

How we practice being ready to support the community in an emergency: weekly and fortnightly having controlled radio nets, both on a repeater and simplex radio networks; so that, in the event of an emergency we can respond with communications if needed.

Why is this important: In the event of a disaster (natural or man-made) cell phone towers may go offline, Police and Fire communications also might go offline or be overwhelmed with calls. Amateur Radio is a backup solution in the event of an emergency. An example of this was Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Most of the island lost power and phone coverage (both land line and cell phone were out). The Red Cross contacted the American Radio Relay League and requested help, “We need 50 of your best radio operators to go down to Puerto Rico.”. See https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/27/us/puerto-rico-maria-ham-radio-operators-trnd/index.html for more detail. Now we are not going to get hit with a hurricane here in the SARA north Texas area, but we could be and have been hit with tornadoes, and large hail storms that have done a lot of damage and have in some cases knocked out communications in the process.

What are we trying to accomplish: Now that we have our own 70cm repeater up and running, at a temporary location, we want to ensure that we have the necessary funds to maintain the repeater. We also, and at some time in the future, would like to consider adding a VHF machine once we have the 70cm machine in our final home in the new building that North Point Church is building. The elders at North Point have graciously allocated space for our equipment that would allow us access whenever required.

How you can help: You can donate to our fund-raising drive, using the button below and designating your donation to the Repeater fund, and since we are a 501c3 charitable organization we can give you a receipt that can be used with the IRS. Even small donations will help. If 100 people donate $20 that would help pay for the necessary antenna to cover the community. If 200 people were to donate $40 each, we could afford to put up a tall tower and purchase an even better radio then planned which would provide even better coverage for the community on what, right now, is our shoe string budget. It’s really up to you, will you help us to help you in the event of an emergency? If so please donate! If you would like more info please contact one of the Board members or email David Mandala at treasurer@sachseradio.org