Cathy Sgro-Boerke King's Daughters Organization and their charitable work for Sangamon County Seniors

Jeff Williams:
Welcome to Community Voices, a production of NPR Illinois. Today in the studio, I'm with Cathy Boerke.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Boerke will work.
Jeff Williams:
Boerke (pronounced ‘Burk’) will work!
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Too many hours lately.
Jeff Williams:
Man, oh man…
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
You could even say Sgro-Boerke. Half the people still call me Sgro.
Jeff Williams:
Right. Been around for a while… like people call me Frog?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
I was going to do that! (laughter) I was like, he'll have to edit it out.
Jeff Williams:
“Hey, Frog!” No, that'd be hilarious if you did, actually.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Thanks, Jeff.
Jeff Williams:
Oh, Jeff. Okay, you did “Jeff” me! (call me Jeff, and not my old nickname Frog – more laughter) I wasn't sure. Frog. The old frog… GO WAY back. You and I helped put on the Pharmacy Gallery and Art Space's first fashion show live. Yeah. That was crazy because there was so many moving parts and making sure we got all that. You were kind of more used to it, but I wasn't really that used to it. I was just like, I watched Project Runway! I don't know!?! Get me a list! That was a lot of fun, too, but...
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Well, it's Women's History Month, and I'm the president of King's Daughters Organization, and we've been around in 1893. However, before we incorporated, we started around 1888. A cool thing is (that) we have 9 circles of friendship. Some of our oldest circles, we have our willing circles have been around since 1890, so that's before we incorporated.
Jeff Williams:
What does that mean? The circles?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
So, we have a membership over 350 of us.
Jeff Williams:
And this is like a Illinois wide or is this locally?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Locally, okay, I should first start off by saying we serve seniors in Sangamon County. Sure. We're A non-profit organization dedicated to the support and well-being of seniors in our community. And we do it through philanthropy and volunteerism. To make this work, we have 9 circles of friendship. And some circles have projects such as Progress Circle has their annual luncheon in style show. And this year in October, they'll be celebrating their 78th annual luncheon in style show.
Jeff Williams:
Oh, wow, that's cool.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Style shows, yeah, exactly.
Jeff Williams:
Where's that happen at?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
That will be at Crowne Plaza. Oh, yeah, October 5th. They are looking for sponsors, so a little plug there.
Jeff Williams:
It happens, it happens, yeah.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Back to the dates, just to give a little bit of history. The King's Daughters Organization was actually the International Order of the King's Daughters Organization founded in 1886 in New York.
Jeff Williams:
Oh, so there's chapters across like the country and.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
In 1888, Reverend Clampett came to Springfield, and that Clampett is a little bit of an ironic name, which I'll get to. And he came from New York City to be the rector of Christ's Church.
Jeff Williams:
So moved to, lived in Springfield then.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
So back then it was, you know, religiously affiliated. We are open, we're inclusive. Right, I love diversity. We have all walks of life. They were trying to figure out a purpose locally. (When) we incorporated, they decided on the King's Daughter's Home for Women.
Jeff Williams:
Yeah.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Then they started looking for a place.
Jeff Williams:
Like a physical location for this. Okay.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
So they landed on the Carrie Post home, which you might be familiar with the socialite post.
Jeff Williams:
Okay. Yeah. Post. Yeah.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Head of General Foods. So, she was born in that house.
Jeff Williams:
Okay.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Which… when we had it, that room became the library.
Jeff Williams:
All right.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
So, on Black Street.
Jeff Williams:
On Black Street.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
These women, they're really incredible. They were really savvy and smart. And in 1895, the home was open debt-free.
Jeff Williams:
Wow!
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Yeah, and then you fast forward the next year, then they had an endowment fund. for $17,000 set aside to help these women.
Jeff Williams:
Like just to help local women?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Well, the ones who were staying in the home. Staying in the home, gotcha. Yeah, I think they started out with eight residents and a cow.
Jeff Williams:
Oh, and a cow. You had to have a cow back then for sure.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Yeah. In January of 1902, there was a fire.
Jeff Williams:
At the home?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
CW Post gave 5,000 towards the cost for the remodeling and another 5,000 for our endowment. And so then we named, renamed the home, the Carrie Post King's Daughters Home for Women.
Jeff Williams:
Gotcha. Because the whole Post family was… were they originally from this area or when the cereal came along? Is that correct?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
So now you're digging deep. Sorry. Okay. So I'm going to do my best. The Post family wasn't originally in the cereal business.
Jeff Williams:
I thought they did some other things.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
They, I think it had something to do. with farming or grain?
Jeff Williams:
Farming and grain? Yeah?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
So there was the father and he had some sons and one of the sons moved into the house on Black Street and the other brothers moved away. This Post was here and his wife, Carrie Post, was pregnant. They decided to stay. He had some health problems. So then they moved Battle Creek, Michigan.
Jeff Williams:
Yeah, thank you.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
And he was searching for things to help him feel better, and that's when Postum cereal came along. He used to take Marjorie to all of the board meetings and everything, and he passed away at 60, and then she took over. She became the wealthiest woman in America.
Jeff Williams:
Wow.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Built the Mar-a-Lago house in Florida.
Jeff Williams:
What? That was a long time ago, but I just didn't see that one coming.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Yeah, so we have ties to a few things, ties to the Dana Thomas house and the Brinkerhoff home, General Foods. The home was open 111 years, and then it was sold to Benedictine.
Jeff Williams:
Benedictine University or college (I should say…) at the time, I guess it was?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
So, with the funds, they decided, long story short, (we) take them to what we know now as Community Foundation for the Land of Lincoln. And we opened a donor-advised fund. That fund was $2.6 million. So that's a lot of money.
Jeff Williams:
And that's to help towards… the elderly?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Exactly. So more recently in the ‘teens’, 2014, we found out that we owed some taxes and we didn't know why. And come to find out that Ira Blackstock had written us into her will. So we shared the land with another organization here locally. We sold the land, but we kept the mineral rights. We have created a separate fund called the Black Stock Fund for grants. So now we have two sets of grants. We have our traditional grants that we've originally had with this and still have with the CFLL and the Blackstock Grant. One is reactive, the traditional grant. So people could come and apply for Funding twenty-five 100 to twenty-five 1000 nonprofits serving seniors, or... we have the proactive black stock grant that is a multi-year grant. First grant was focused on dementia and Alzheimer's.
Jeff Williams:
Okay, so it kind of it can be some of them are focused on certain maybe health issues people like some seniors have sometimes. Yeah, kind of. Okay.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Specifically, that one was dementia and Alzheimer's. But ironically, going back to Clampett, if you're old enough, you saw the Beverly Hillbillies.
Jeff Williams:
I wanted to say something about Jed. (laughter) I was like, I'm not saying anything. I'm going to try to keep it serious here.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Yeah, so we struck oil! (more laughter)
Jeff Williams:
Okay, I see. That was a good build up to a joke there…. Nice! I like it.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
In 2024, we gave out about that 2.6 million in grants.
Jeff Williams:
That's awesome.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
And that's a short time, I mean, since 2008. So this year, we're in the middle of our grant cycle. We've had the biggest ask yet from the community, lots and lots of applications. It's getting more competitive. We will surpass the $3 million mark.
Jeff Williams:
Oh, man. of grants like issued out. Yeah. Wow. So can you go a little bit into, so the community knows like some of the, I don't want to get too specific because I know each case can be a little different, but like some of the ways that you are able to help some elderly.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
So, okay. So when the home closed, many of the residents went to Fairhills. It's now known as Illinois Presbyterian Home Communities. They're on the corner of Chatham and Chatham.
Jeff Williams:
Yeah, right behind Fairhills Mall itself?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Well, in that more caddy corner.
Jeff Williams:
Caddy corner, I guess... Okay, yeah.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Closer to Pasfield Park, or the golf course, I mean.
Jeff Williams:
Okay, now I got it.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
So with the women going there, we have dedicated a lot of service there. And We do bingo and do some personal shopping and sometimes a circle will adopt A resident and take them out for their birthday and stuff like that. And we have monthly activities and parties and a little shopping cart that they could buy some necessities off of. But we do that and we also do daily bread. We have a couple routes where our members will.
Jeff Williams:
Deliver food stuffs too? Nice.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
And then another thing that we do with our grant recipients we always ask if there's something we could do to help so our members can volunteer towards something.
Jeff Williams:
Oh yeah definitely. So it looks like some of the some of the places here that you somewhat I'm not sure if it's work with or how you'd consider it, but like the Catholic Charity Diocese, Contact Ministries, it looks like the Center for the Visually Impaired, Habitat for Humanity, the Loami Area Community Pantry.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Yeah, they're all grant recipients.
Jeff Williams:
So some are individual and then some are towards different local organizations that can distribute the money as well?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
To qualify for a grant you have to be a non-profit okay and then you have to be a non-profit serving seniors serving seniors in Sangamon County gotcha and sometimes that could be the idea might be restrictive because it's Sangamon County but It could serve 11 counties or whatever, but the program has to just remain Sangamon (County).
Jeff Williams:
Gotcha.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Yeah, there's, a lot of food insecurities.
Jeff Williams:
Oh yeah, sure.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
People need medical and dental and vision and hearing. There's a lot of good people out there doing good work.
Jeff Williams:
Yes! I'm glad you contacted me about coming in for this today, for sure, you know. So, it also, as far as some senior living sort of things…. (does) it go towards that or am I getting off track with that a little bit, like the adaptability?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Oh, okay. Well, AdaptABILITY homes, it's a different.
Jeff Williams:
Okay.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
No, that's good though. So that's my personal business, which did start out…. target seniors to keep them safe and independent.
Jeff Williams:
Right, but it still is another thing to help seniors.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Well, one testament on how great our membership feels about each other is we have a lot of members who have served 50 years on up.
Jeff Williams:
Wow.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
So we have several, and we have a couple at the 65-year mark. So if that doesn't say something.
Jeff Williams:
That's a nice commitment. Yeah, they're obviously committed to that. So that's awesome. Yeah.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
One other thing. Originally, I said we were a donor advised fund. Recently, we changed to an endowment fund that gives people a better opportunity to give with the Illinois Gives Tax Credit Program.
Jeff Williams:
I see.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
And they could look into the Community Foundation for that opportunity. that people like to give, but if it's if it's hard to give, it.
Jeff Williams:
Right? So, if that makes it easier for them to give, that's definitely a good, that's a good step. Cathy, if there's any other things that you're like that you wanted to let people know about that we have, if you want to keep talking, I got it still rolling. So, if you want to keep... Anything you want to say still?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
So we are doing a membership drive. And our website is KDOSpringfieldil.org. And if you go there, you can learn a lot about what we do.
Jeff Williams:
It looked like it had like a mission statement and like different events that you were involved with and things that if you did go to that website, that you would be able to get a lot of information. Once again, that is what? KDOSpringfieldil.org. And you're the president.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
I am... the president through May.
Jeff Williams:
Through May, okay.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Actually… until May.
Jeff Williams:
So how long was your term?
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
My term was as president was two years.
Jeff Williams:
Two years? Okay, I gotcha.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Yeah, we have a lot of great opportunities.
Jeff Williams:
For involvement and stuff for people, yeah.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
All kinds of levels of opportunity. And a lot of social too.
Jeff Williams:
Either like financially you can support or just by being involved. just to help volunteer in different ways too.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
And make a lot of great friends.
Jeff Williams:
Love it. All right, well, once again, we're in the studio with Cathy Sgro-Boerke, who's the president of the King's Daughters Organization.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Thank you, Jeff.
Jeff Williams:
Thanks a lot, Kathy. And thanks for not calling me frog again.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
We're past that since we matured a little bit.
Jeff Williams:
Matured a little bit, yes, exactly. Okay. All right, well, thanks a lot.
Cathy Sgro-Boerke:
Thank you.
Jeff Williams:
Community Voices is a production of NPR, Illinois.