About Us
Make a Difference Michiana's mission is to connect the resources of the community with the non-profit organizations of Michiana.
We collaborate with over 300 local agencies to provide a one-stop website for you to find all the information you need about non-profit organizations in the Michiana area. Our vision is to better connect the Difference Makers of our community in order to improve the lives of all Michiana residents through generous giving and volunteerism. Our History In 2004 South Bend resident Mary Dunbar had a vision for a website that would pull together contact information for the many non-profits she had worked with during her work at WSBT. She found that a common characteristic of many local organizations was a need for more visibility, both online and offline, and the Michiana community was lacking a centralized source of non-profit information. Mary assembled a group of community leaders to form the original board of directors and together they created and launched the Make a Difference Michiana web site in December 2005.
What began as a collaborative project among 16 local organizations exploded with popularity as each month saw dozens of new organizations join the site. The website gave all participating organizations the capability to accept online donations, which brought in thousands of dollars to the collaborating organizations in the first year. A calendar of events, volunteer opportunities, news stories about non-profits, and eventually blogging were all added to the site to create an even more comprehensive source of local non-profit information. Make a Difference Michiana Today The website currently lists over 300 local organizations, along with hundreds of local volunteer opportunites and donation needs. Thousands of people use the site each month to find contact information, volunteer opportunities, donation needs, and information on services provided. In 2007 over 200 people used makeadifferencemichiana.org to contact a local agency about getting help for themselves or others. Since the launch in 2005, the site has logged over 1.6 million page views and continues to build its rich database of non-profit information. Make a Difference Michiana builds new connections in the community not only through the website but also through their two annual events: Make a Difference Day in the fall, and the Philanthropy Summit in the spring. They also work to build collaborations among non-profits and connections to businesses through regular communication with their non-profit collaborators about new opportunities. Many of these opportunities are also listed on the blog. The Make a Difference Michiana service area includes St. Joseph, Elkhart, Marshall, LaPorte, and Kosciusko counties of Indiana and Cass and Berrien counties in Michigan. All non-profit organizations in our service area are encouraged to add their information to the directory, free of charge. Make a Difference Michiana is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Get Involved With Make a Difference Michiana Working with Make a Difference Michiana gives you a unique opportunity to help many non-profits at once, and will help you quickly develop a bird's eye view of the entire community. We have several committees that are active throughout the year that we invite you to join: Development Committee Make a Difference Day Planning Committee (early fall) Philanthropy Summit Planning Committee (spring) Volunteer Center Steering Committee Please contact us if you are interested. | 
