Fountain of Kindness is raising funds to provide sukkahs, lulavs, etrogs and food for families in need this Sukkot following the success of the nonprofit’s Rosh Hashanah campaign. For the Jewish new year, volunteers packed and distributed celebration kits to about 126 families in need.
“We bring the Jewish community together to spread kindness to people going through hardship,” founder Melody Aziz said.
The Great Neck-based nonprofit has a WhatsApp group where over 600 members volunteer to take on opportunities to give.
Recent tasks include shopping for and delivering groceries to families in need, making and delivering gift baskets to children with cancer and cooking and dropping off meals. The organization also fills bikur cholim rooms in hospitals with snacks and helps with the cost of Jewish burials for mourning families in need.
“The world is such a scary place these days, and I think it’s important to teach your kids to be kind and to give back to the community and those in need,” Aziz said.
Aziz didn’t realize a one-off volunteer opportunity eight years ago would make her into a community help distributor. Aziz, a cancer survivor, was asked to visit a 21-year-old girl battling brain cancer who did not want to continue her final months of treatment.
“I ended up staying there for about seven hours trying to convince this girl to continue treatment. ‘You only have three months. You could do it,’” she urged her. “And then finally, after lots of stories I told her, she finally agreed to continue treatment.”
While the patient finished treatment, Aziz sent volunteers to bring the patient gifts and meals.
“We were constantly showing her love,” Aziz said.
Months after the patient entered remission, people were still reaching out to Aziz for volunteer opportunities, she said.
“This just happened to fall on my plate. I wasn’t an actual organization. Then people just kept asking me for opportunities to do things, and I was like, ‘I don’t have anything, guys.’”
The continued interest made Aziz aware that there was a lack of easy ways to give back to the community, she said.
“That’s when I realized so many people want to do good, so many people want to give back, and there’s no easy way for them to do so,” she said. “So I said, ‘I’m going to start something where there’s an opportunity on the spot, whoever wants to grab it.’”
Aziz started posting opportunities whenever one came up, and whoever was “available to do it at that moment,” she said. This is largely how the organization operates today.
Aziz formalized Fountain of Kindness in April 2018 because of the group’s rapid growth. The organization’s 2024 revenue was $209,000, compared to $32,300 in 2018 according to ProPublica.
While most of the families Fountain of Kindness serves are based in Great Neck, it also caters to families in Port Washington, Queens, Manhattan and other nearby areas. The organization uses a screening process to verify the families are truly in need, Aziz said.
The organization offers several virtual ways to donate, including a P.O. Box and Venmo.
