Saturday was Pitch Day. Excitement reached a fever pitch in the standing-room-only studio at LTV in Wainscott when Nancy Atlas took the stage, opening the night with a New Orleans-style celebration and setting the stage for eight local charitable organizations to tell the board of Pitch Your Peers how deserving they are of the evening’s $50,000 grand prize.
Only one could take it home, and it was Share the Harvest Farm, a six-acre nonprofit farm on Long Lane in East Hampton that donates its harvest to local organizations to feed their communities. Meredith Arm, who is the non-profit’s executive director and runs its farm stand, pitched last year and did not win, but this year she came out on top.
Hamptons Community Outreach, run by Marit Molin, was a close second, nabbing the $25,000 award. Ms. Molin works in underfunded and underserviced communities to make large and small contributions that change people’s lives.
In a change from the past several years, the large crowd in attendance at LTV Studios voted for their favorite charity, and Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center took home $1,000. That prize money had been tripled by the end of the night after Amy Leopold, a board member, donated $1,000 and the Pitch Your Peers group surprised them with another $1,000. The Whitmore center left with $3,000.
The five remaining charities -- Atlas for the Arts, I-Tri, Sag Harbor Community Food Pantry, South Fork Bakery, and Southampton Fresh Air Home -- were each surprised and happy to receive $1,000. That will cover their dues for the year and they were invited to pitch again next year.
I-Tri, an East End program to empower young girls through a youth triathlon, was the first winner of the grant money when Pitch Your Peers began here in 2023, taking home $30,000.
Brooke Bohnsack, a mother of three who moved to East Hampton during the Covid-19 pandemic, founded the original chapter of P.Y.P. 10 years ago in Greenwich, Conn. Since then, additional chapters have opened in Seattle, Chicago, Westchester, Palm Beach and New York City.
“It’s like ‘Shark Tank,’ but for charity,” Ms. Bohnsack said this week. Each member of the all-woman group pays $1,000 per year in dues, which is pooled. Group members can then pitch their favorite charity and vote. This year 65 women joined the South Fork group, a record number.
“I started P.Y.P. because I believe that when people come together, they can do extraordinary things,” Ms. Bohnsack said. “P.Y.P. is more than a grant. It’s a celebration of the remarkable people who make our community such a beautiful place to call home. It shines a light on the needs that too often go unnoticed, and it brings people together around a shared purpose. When nonprofits, neighbors, and friends gather in one room, we learn from one another, we find new ways to work together, and our whole community grows stronger.”
