Do Good Fest Contributes Over $1.7M to Vermont Flood Relief!

As you may have heard, Vermont experienced historic flooding in July, resulting in National Life transforming within three days the annual benefit concert Do Good Fest, historically held on the company’s back lawn, into an indoor acoustic performance that was livestreamed so that viewers across Vermont, the nation and globally could support the rebuilding of Vermont through online donations.

“On Wednesday morning, we were sitting around saying ‘what the heck are we going to do?’” said Mehran Assadi, Chairman, CEO and President of National Life Group. “All of a sudden, one of our teammates said ‘you know what? Let’s do a fundraiser… let’s turn this into a major event in Vermont.’ Everyone is trying to figure out how can we help – how we can be part of the solution, and here we are, 72 hours later, raising money for our neighbors.”

We announced this week that July 15’s Do Good Fest has officially brought in $1,712, 445 in donations and pledges for Vermont Community Foundation’s VT Flood Response & Recovery Fund 2023. 

You can also watch Chief People Officer Michael Veilleux, who joined our other Do Good Fest media partner Vermont’s Own WCAX Channel 3and Cat Viglienzoni at the Champlain Valley Fair Tuesday evening: Flood relief fundraising update (wcax.com)   

We can all be proud that our Do Good Fest generated 1,845 gifts from 42 states and five countries outside of the U.S. raising $962,445. National Life matched $750,000. 

Downtown Montpelier and Barre are still gutted from the flooding. Recovery is going to take a long time. People can still donate to flood recovery via the Vermont Community Foundation’s website. 

And living our “Do Good” values, National Life is also helping by:  

• housing Montpelier’s U.S. Postal Service sorting  
• donating our parking lot for the DMV to hold drivers’ tests 
• donating our facilities team, which recently responded to the Kellogg Hubbard Library’s call for help in removing part of their contaminated lawn  
• many hours of volunteer work in local communities 

Thank you to each and every one of you who gave; this is an outstanding response!