$200,000 collected for Joplin assistance

    More than $200,000 has come in from the Branson Cares: Joplin Benefit Concert and Telethon held in June and volunteers continue to collect more money daily, according to one of the event organizers.

    On Thursday, Cindy Merry said volunteers have collected $202,732 so far.

    “On the night of the benefit, there were pledges of $221,000 and over the last two months, we have been diligently working to collect the money,” Merry said.

    She said volunteers manning the phones during the benefit wrote down information, such as addresses, phone numbers and credit card information.

    Since that time Merry said volunteers have spent hundreds of hours entering the information into a database and following up with donors when there was a problem with any of the information  provided.

    She said so far, they have yet to collect $24,831 of money pledged, but continue to work on bringing in the last dollars.

    “We are going to continue to collect as long as we can,” she said.

    Of the $202,000 collected so far, $45,000 was given to the Joplin band boosters and $5,000 to St. Mary’s School.

    Merry said $50,000 was guaranteed to the schools and everything else that comes in will go to St. John’s Regional Medical Center.

    They plan to present St. John’s with a check early in September.

    All in all, Merry said despite all the hours of work that went into the benefit before and after the show, she is pleased with how it has turned out.

    “When we set out to do this benefit, I was worried it wouldn’t raise  $50,000 because who knew what would happen,” she said.