Madison Miracles – New Nonprofit Aims to Help Where Needed
(Lilly Crossley, Nov. 7, 2023)
Madison Heights, MI – What once started as a dream has now become a growing organization aimed to help residents in Madison Heights. Madison Miracles is a non-profit, and it began its funding from the owners themselves, Rebecca Chambliss and her husband, Matt.
Rebecca first started helping out with the Madison Heights food pantry in 2020. She also spent time working with clothing drives, Gleaners Food Bank, Focus Hope, and Forgotten Harvest. “I just kept adding more and more things that I was helping, and I would see where they helped people, but also where they didn’t,” Rebecca says. This sparked the idea to create an organization that focused on those areas that needed more support.
“Madison Miracles became something that, you know, we can’t fix the world, but maybe we can fix our community,” explains Rebecca.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, there were many charities and organizations that helped out families in need, but when “COVID kind of dwindled away, so did the help,” Rebecca says, “but COVID didn’t cause the need and these situations. COVID was a flashlight, and it shined a light on the need that was already there.” Although COVID funding has disappeared, there are still tons of people that need help. Rebecca uses her organization to provide that support.
Madison Miracles offers many services and goods to those that need it, including clothing drives, toy drives, school supplies, winter gear, heat and water bill payments, and replacement part payments, such as ones for cars.
Rebecca and Matt Chambliss have hosted toy and winter clothes drives the past few years, and their popularity is only growing. The drives took place during two weekends in December, and the couple had a red mailbox outside their house for donations and for children to deliver letters. Last year, they even got a hot chocolate station and people to dress up as Santa, the Grinch, Buddy the Elf, and other characters to come to the event for children to hand deliver letters to them.
Another event Rebecca and Matt host around the holidays is the Holiday Decoration Drive, where people can donate or take Christmas lights and other decorations. Christmas trees have become a popular thing for donating, and 16 families last year received a tree for the holiday season. They also create a holiday map, which provides a list of all the houses that are decorated outside for the holidays, and people can drive or walk around to view them all. This event takes place for two weekends in November.
Since she was a single mom for years, Rebecca can resonate with these families in need, saying, “It was horrific. I look at all these people who are in need, and I know that feeling of going to bed hungry so my kids went to bed full.” That experience encourages Rebecca even more to provide help.
Rebecca and Matt currently do everything from their home. “If you open my garage door right now, stuff will fall out because we’ve been storing all our donations in there,” Rebecca enthuses. The two currently run Madison Miracles alone, but they hope to make a board one day, as well as find a place for storage by 2024. They also would love to have tradesmen, mechanics, plumbers, and electricians to help with families and their needs.
One hope for the future is getting local businesses involved and having them help donate. An idea is to create t-shirts, putting the businesses that help out on the back, and those shirts would be worn at every event for a year. Forming a team of people to help call local businesses and request donations is also a future goal.
Rebecca has lived in Madison Heights since 2009. “It’s a magic city,” she describes. Along with being a registered nurse, she is also the president of the Madison High School PTSCO, the vice president of the Madison District Public Schools Board of Education, a member of the parks and rec board, a historical commissioner, and a part of the Madison Heights food pantry and clothing drive.
Rebecca and Matt hope to one day spread their organization outside of Madison Heights, but in the short life that Madison Miracles has lived, it has already impacted and improved so many families, making the “magic city” even more magical.
Learn more about Madison Miracles on Facebook.
