When the Park City Community Foundation launches the 2023 Live PC Give PC day of giving on Nov. 3, more than 122 local nonprofits will have volunteers, staff and board members out and about to encourage the public to dip into their pockets for donations.

Two of those organizations will be the Lucky Project, which oversees the Lucky Ones Coffee shop at the Park City Library, and the Park City Beethoven Festival, which celebrated its 40th annual event this year.

Lucky Project

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Taylor Matkins, Lucky Project’s chief financial officer and co-founder, is looking forward to the 24-hours of fundraising.

“The event as a whole is something so spectacular and something so Park City,” she said. “It really showcases how generous the community is, regardless if they live here part time or full time. It’s a day we all come together and support the foundational things that make where we want to live exceptional.”

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Lucky Project is a nonprofit that has taken it upon itself to show the world the value of individuals with disabilities and developing the fundamentals to help those individuals create full and meaningful lives through employment, Matkins said.

“We are one of the few places in the state and in the country that does this, and we put people in positions where they can shine, grow and become confident,” she said. “We also get behind them to help them develop skills to move forward, because we want all of our team to graduate out of our store and move onto their next jobs.”

Lucky Project’s staff will be out and about on Friday to encourage the public to give, Matkins said.

“As always, our crew is very high-energy and high-spirited, so we’ll be out and about fundraising all over town,” she said.

In addition, the Park City Community Foundation will throw an all-ages party at the library, Matkins said.

“We’ve always been like a community living room, so we’re honored to welcome all the nonprofits and the public in to enjoy the day,” she said.

Lucky Project’s goal is to raise $60,000 on Friday.

“This is the biggest amount we’ve set, because we usually raise about $40,000 each year,” Matkins said.

A large portion of the money will help build a commercial kitchen space in Lucky Ones’ shop in its Kamas location, 150 S. Main St., which opened nearly a year ago.

“The new kitchen, which will employ more than a dozen new people, will provide new opportunities, including inclusive cooking classes, community meals we can do some outreach with and other give-backs,” she said.

The money will be a nice addition to Lucky Project’s average annual budget that lands between $250,000 to $300,000, Matkins said.

“A vast majority of that goes to payroll, because we want to create opportunities for raises and other growth for our team,” she said. “We have employed more than 50 people, and I still get calls from people who ask if we have openings. Some people live two hours away, and they are willing to drive that far to work with us.”

Matkins and Katie Holyfield originally opened Lucky Ones as a for-profit company in 2018, but switched to a nonprofit status with Lucky Project within the year.

“Although we could have continued as a for-profit company, we switched so we could move the needle and create jobs for people so much faster,” Matkins said. “We had so many people on our waitlist, and we still constantly have more than 50 people on the list who are waiting for job openings.”

Since then the organization has added the Kamas location as well as a mobile Lucky Ones Coffee Camper food truck. 

In another new development, Matkins and Holyfield were invited to teach two classes about inclusive employment at Harvard University after Thanksgiving. 

“Katie and I have big goals and big dreams, and we are work horses to the fact that if we have a goal, we’ll go out and work as hard as we can to move as (fast) as we can,” Matkins said. “So, I’ve never been more grateful to live in a community that is so supportive and who love our crew so deeply.”

Park City Beethoven Festival

This year’s Live PC Give PC event is bittersweet for Park City Beethoven Festival. While it is the musical nonprofit’s biggest fundraiser of the year, it will participate without its founding member Leslie Harlow, who died of cancer in February, said Russell Harlow, her husband and festival artistic director.

“Leslie always handled the marketing and fundraising, and I am terrible at it,” he said. “But I do have to say that Live PC Give PC is a marvelous thing, because it brings everybody together.”

By everybody, Harlow means the different nonprofits that serve Park City, Summit and Wasatch counties.

“Usually the different nonprofits fundraise alone, so this way we can see what everybody else is doing,” he said.

The Park City Beethoven Festival’s annual budget, which includes in-kind donations, comes in a little under $100,000, Harlow said.

“We’re able to do all we do with that money because we’re very responsible in how we use it,” he said. “Since we started 40 years ago, we’ve performed 874 concerts, and 113 of them can be heard on the festival’s YouTube site.”

Although the summer segment of the festival just ended, Harlow is currently planning the festival’s fall and winter series.

“We’re planning six concerts — three here and three in other Utah communities — this fall, and we want to do a bevy of outreach,” he said. “So, we’ll probably end up doing 30 to 40 events, including what we have done over this past summer, that feature players from all around the country.”

Harlow’s fundraising goal over the next few years is somewhere between $200,000 to $300,000.

“If we can do that, we can create a tremendous amount of good work in Park City and the Wasatch Front,” he said. “And since I’m 74, our aim is to work out a strong board and a good budget that will allow the festival to carry on in the future with a new music director by the time I’m 78.”

During this year’s Live PC Give PC day of giving, The Park City Beethoven Festival has a  $3,000 matching grant at this point from the Sounds and Science Commissioning Club, which commissions new compositions by contemporary composers.

“We’ve had smaller matches in the past, but this is a really wonderful one,” Harlow said. “So we hope people will join in and help us to make that match.”

Volunteers, board members and Harlow himself plan to be out on the streets to help recruit donors and raise awareness of the festival.

“I’m currently pulling together a team,” he said.