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On February 22, 1922 members of the Kingsport Business Men's Club met at the Community "Y" and began laying the ground work for the first ever Community Chest. Chairing the committee to spearhead the fundraiser was local businessman B. M. Brown. Initially promoted as a means of organized giving, the first campaign had a modest goal of just $10,000- or $177,309.83 in today’s market. Of the $10,000 needed, fifty percent was expected to be contributed by local industries, and the other half by local citizenship. As the ad in the paper read "$5,000 is asked, $10,000 is expected." With Kingsport proper being only five years old, the founding fathers of our city were engraining philanthropic giving into the core of our community right from the very beginning.
Benefiting from the 1922 Community Chest was Associated Charities, Baby Clinic, Nurses' Loan Chest, Community Hospital, and the American Red Cross. In fact, the American Red Cross (the Kingsport Chapter founded in 1917) still receives funding from United Way of Greater Kingsport 102 years later. An article from the February 24, 1922, edition of the Times News states, "In the long run, it will be much more economic for the people of Kingsport to take care of the necessary charities in an organized manner than it would be for them to contribute separately to each individual charity." While the sentiment is over one hundred years old, it remains the premise on which United Way still operates today.
Twelve years after those initial fundraising efforts, the Community Chest was officially Charted as the "Community Chest of Kingsport" on June 8th, 1934. Names on the Charter included B.M. Brown, J. Fred Johnson, P.S. Wilcox, E.W. Palmer and fourteen other civic leaders. Named as the first president after the Charter, was Ben M. Brown, the very man who started it all a decade earlier.
While the 1934 Charter was the end of the informal 1922 Community Chest, it was just the beginning of what would eventually be a 90-year legacy of community giving, impact and volunteerism. But it hasn't been without major hurdles and milestones. The following decade would prove just how valuable the chest was to the community, both young and old. Join us next month when we visit 1933 and the beginning of Holston Valley Community Hospital.
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