The Purple Tie Stakes is Back - June 3rd!

We’re happy to announce that after a multi-year hiatus, The Purple Tie Stakes is finally back! It’s once again time to break out your finest purple ties, blazers, sundresses, and hats and join us at Belmont Park, Saturday June 3rd, at 1 pm. 

Secure your spot by buying your tickets here. 

The first 200 ticket purchasers will receive a voucher for free entry into Belmont. Late purchasers will have to pay Belmont’s $5 entry fee. (Children under 13 will be admitted for free).   

As always, all proceeds will be put towards helping families with children who have special needs. 

Sponsors, raffle donors, and volunteers needed! 

As in years past, we’re looking for:

• Raffle item donations

• Sponsors to donate food, beverage, or to sponsor individual pens ($1K per pen)  

• Volunteers to help us set-up, run, and clean up after the event 

If you’re interested in any of the three, please reach out to admin@mulhallfoundation.com 

Michael Mulhall Foundation update 

As an events based organization, our operations were first interrupted by the Covid pandemic. After the world started to re-open, we were still unable to host our flagship event due to construction at Belmont. Despite these setbacks, we’ve managed to remain active on the charitable front. 

When the pandemic hit, we allocated funds to our partners at St. Mary’s to be used to directly purchase PPE (personally protective equipment). This was put towards gowns, gloves and masks used to keep both staff and patients safe during the height of the crisis. This helped St. Mary’s make it through the entire crisis without one medically fragile patient contracting the virus.   

Recently, we donated another 9 tricycles to children with the help of our friends at Share the Voice.

We’re also in the process of financing two custom wheelchairs for children at St. Mary’s thanks to a very generous individual donor. This will put us at 48 families directly supported through your generosity over the years! 

Closing thoughts 

Massive thanks to everyone who's helped us keep Mike’s memory alive. Your contributions year in and year out continue to make a difference, and we always have a great time raising these funds in Mike’s name. We look forward to seeing you all at Belmont in June!  

~The Michael Mulhall Foundation

Michael Mulhall Foundation 2021 Update

To our Supporters,

We hope that everyone had a great summer!

As we all know, large events have been difficult to schedule and hold this year. On top of the obvious Covid limitations, Belmont Park is doing a massive construction job right now, and we are saddened to say that The Purple Tie Stakes would be logistically impossible for us to hold this year, and we have to postpone the event again. We know this is two years running now that we haven't been able to hold our flagship event, and we're very disappointed we won't be able to party for a great cause with you all. That said, our commitment to the Foundation remains, and as soon as we can put on another great event, we will.

The Foundation will continue working with the great partners we have at St. Mary's and Share the Voice to support families with children with special needs. We've donated over $130,000 dollars to local families already in the last 7 years, and made substantial PPE donations to the heroic workers at St. Mary's last year in the height of the Covid hospitalization wave. And we definitely don't plan to stop - we will get together again to dress in purple suits and dresses, celebrate, share some stories and have some laughs in Michael's memory while raising money for families in need of our support.

Keep a lookout for an update regarding where we've allocated your generous donations for 2021, and if you'd like to make a donation in lieu of our event, you can click here.

Thank you,
The Michael Mulhall Foundation

The Michael Mulhall Foundation - 10 Years Later

It’s hard to believe that today marks the 10 year anniversary of Mike’s passing shortly after he graduated from The University of Scranton in 2010.

Today, Mike would be proud of the legacy he left behind. While a son, brother, and friend can never be replaced, Mike has certainly lived on through his family and friends who will never forget him.

The University of Scranton’s Michael Mulhall ‘10 Memorial Scholarship is fully endowed and grants scholarships each year to students interested in pursuing a career in special needs education. Scholarships will continue to be granted each year going forward.

Thanks to the generosity of Mike’s friends and family, The Michael Mulhall Foundation has been able to fund dozens of projects that provide assistance to families that have children with special needs. This has also been made possible through the help of our friends at St. Mary’s, Share The Voice, CHOP, and Camp Anchor.

This year, in special commemoration of Mike, we’ve made donations to both the University of Scranton and Camp Anchor - the camp for children with special needs that Mike loved and worked at every summer.

2020 Update

2020 has been a strange and difficult year for pretty much everyone, throwing many plans out the window.

In a typical year, the MMF works with St. Mary’s to find families who have needs that they themselves can’t afford to cover and can’t get covered by insurance - wheelchair ramps, custom wheelchairs, stairlifts, home modifications etc. In the midst of the coronavirus crisis, it was the St. Mary’s staff who needed our help this year as they dealt with a health, logistical and funding crisis all at once.

Given the circumstances, The MMF used this year’s St. Mary’s allocation for the direct purchase of PPE (personally protective equipment). This was used to buy gowns, gloves and masks used to keep both staff and patients safe during the height of the crisis.

Thankfully, St. Mary’s was able to make it through the entire crisis without one medically fragile patient contracting the virus (more on St. Mary’s & COVID-19 here).

What’s next?

Unfortunately, given the uncertainty that still exists surrounding COVID-19 and live events, we’ve made the difficult decision to postpone The Purple Tie Stakes for the first time in 6 years.

The good news is that the board of The Michael Mulhall Foundation has committed to keeping the foundation going and the Stakes will be back!

After all, despite the good that’s been accomplished in his name we suspect Mike would be most proud of the fact that every year his friends and family dress up in silly purple jackets and dresses, bet the ponies and drink some beers in his memory. For that reason alone, the party must continue.

We thank everyone for all of the support over the years and look forward to seeing you at the next event.

- The Michael Mulhall Foundation

Our work with St. Mary's

Over the years, the support that our donors and event attendees have shown The Michael Mulhall Foundation has been tremendous. With all of their support, we have been able to finance the completion of 36 projects to assist families with children that have special needs. These projects have ranged from custom wheel chairs, adaptive tricycles, stair-glides, wheel chair ramps.

With all of our projects, we aim to identify families who have unmet needs not covered by insurance that they themselves cannot meet. Our oldest partner in helping identify such families is St. Mary’s Healthcare System for Children, located in Bayside Long Island.

Enjoy this video that St. Mary’s put together detailing our work together over the years, made possible by our generous donors!

Michael Mulhall Foundation 2019 Update

The Michael Mulhall Foundation has now completed its 4th year of operation since being founded by Michael’s friends and family in 2015. With the help of our supporters, The MMF has financed the completion of 36 projects to assist families with children that have special needs. These projects have ranged from custom wheelchairs, adaptive tricycles, stair-glides, wheel chair ramps to the purchase of special utensils to allow children to independently feed themselves.

The MMF has grown well beyond what any of us could have possibly imagined when we first started out. In this update, we’ll reflect on the last four years, recap our charitable activities of 2018 and outline our plans for 2019 and beyond.

Reminder - The Purple Ties Stakes is back and tickets are available for purchase here!

The Foundation’s beginnings

While the Michael Mulhall Foundation was officially founded in 2015, it grew out of a scholarship fund at the University of Scranton created to commemorate Mike’s life after his passing in 2010. The scholarship fund began with the goal of raising $50,000 over 5 years, but due to an incredible outpouring of support, that goal was exceeded within a year, reaching $100,000 in under two.

Mike’s scholarship remains fully endowed, meaning the principal raised is invested and the proceeds of that investment are awarded to new scholars each year. The scholarship is awareded to students interested in following in Mike’s footsteps by pursuing a career in special education. 4 recipients have received the scholarship to date and this structure ensures that there will always be a Mulhall scholar at The University of Scranton.

Our founding in 2015-2016

With the scholarship fully endowed, Mike’s friends and family came together and decided to start The Michael Mulhall Foundation in 2015. Since Mike took a great deal of pride and enjoyemeny from his work with children with special needs at Camp Anchor each summer, we all felt it would be a fitting tribute to dedicate our mission to helping those same children and their families.

With a plan in place, 2015 was spent raising funds through some of the same event that previously funded Mike’s scholarship: a baseball game and a 5K run. We then capped off the year with the first of what would become our flagship event: The Purple Tie Stakes. Since our mission of assisting children that have special needs involves a high degree of complexity, we established a partnership with St. Mary’s Healthcare System for Children. This partnership allowed us to leverage St. Mary’s expertise to identify deserving families and then responsibly deploy funds to meet unmet needs of those families.

With the funds raised from our 2015 events, in 2016 we built 3 wheelchair ramps for patients of St. Mary’s Healthcare System for Children while also purchasing a custom mobility scooter for one of the children

2017

In 2017, we repeated the same formula that worked in the prior year. In addition to growing our partnership with St. Mary’s, we expanded to working with The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Long Island’s Share The Voice.

Funded by increased donations and revenues from our 2016 events, we were able to finance 13 different projects ranging from custom wheelchairs, wheelchair ramps, mobility tricyles and custom stairlifts for families across New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

In 2017, we completed the process of becoming a recognized 501c3 organization while also seeing The Purple Tie Stakes continue to evolve into a truly special event, with an increased number of enthusiastic participants.

2018

We are happy to report that 2018 was another record year for The MMF, with 20 projects financed for various families. These included mobility tricycles, strollers, and several wheelchairs and ramps that required extensive customization. These also included smaller projects, such as the purchase of a special set of utensils to give a child the independence to eat on his own.

Here’s a letter we received from one of the thankful recipients:

MMF in 2019

The Michael Mulhall Foundation has grown to a size and scale inconceivable to us when we first started four years ago. Along with the current scale of our operations has come certain growing pains and challenges. These challenges mainly stem from:

• reporting requirements needed to maintain compliance as a 501c3 organization

• administrative weight associated with maintaining partnerships with 3 different children’s organizations across multiple states

• organizational efforts from hosting multiple events each year

In addition to the administrative challenges associated with running the foundation, the board has also reached a point where life has presented new priorities: marriage and children for some and new careers for others.

Despite these challenges, the board remains committed to growing the foundation, throwing more great events and helping more families as an homage to our friend Mike. As such, we’re taking certain steps this year to be able to continue to do so in a more sustainable manner.

Scaling back; refocusing on our strengths

The foundation has decided that the best way to move forward is to focus on our strengths, as well as hone in on certain areas that need improvement. To do so, this year we’ve opted to scale back in certain areas.

In past years, we’ve thrown as many as four events. While each of these events requires similar organization effort, one yields the overwhelming majority of revenue for the foundation: The Purple Tie Stakes. Subsequently, we’ve decided to focus all of our efforts this year into making The Purple Tie Stakes all it can be.

We are also refocusing our partnership efforts with St. Mary’s Healthcare System for Children and Long Island’s Share the Voice. We are incredibly proud of the work we’ve done with the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia but have found ourselves spread too thin managing a third partnership. We believe that by focusing on two partnerships, we can do more good for more families in the long term.

We currently have a number of projects underway with St. Mary’s and Share the Voice being funded by last year’s charitable efforts. We’re also funding a special type of therapy for one child to help them regenerate the use of their legs. We’ll provide another update as these projects are finalized.

Sincere thanks to all of our supporters

It’s hard to believe that it has been almost seven years since Mike’s passing. We’re incredibly proud that we’ve been able to take a tragic event, and turn it into something so positive. This positive outcome however, would not have been attainable without the overwhelming and continuous support from all of Mike’s friends and family.

The Michael Mulhall Foundation is incredibly grateful to each and every one of you who has donated, showed up to events, and ultimately helped us keep Mike’s memory alive. We sincerely thank you for your continued support.

See everyone at the Purple Tie Stakes!

-The MMF