“I was mortified,” she said. “I didn’t even know how to react.”
Biltz said she contacted a friend from church who was affiliated with St. Vincent DePaul and that friend not only helped get the child a new gaming system, she also led efforts to give Christmas dinner to the family and a bicycle to another child in the home.
“I thought ‘this is the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen,’ ” Biltz said.
But instead of merely filing away the incident as a warm memory, Biltz launched a gift-giving endeavor of her own.
That same year, when she got word of a single mother who needed socks, Biltz said she posted to Facebook “does anybody have any extra money or socks so you can help this lady” and ended up giving the woman socks and other items for her children.
Year Two of Bonnie’s Hope saw the group helping about 10 children, and within five or six years that number was up to 100, Biltz said. “It just grew and grew and grew,” she said. Today it exists via a private Facebook group that people can request to join.
The group started working with Hannah’s Treasure Chest and St. Vincent DePaul to provide gently used items, including clothes, to those in need and started to ask people to sponsor them around Christmas.
“In the process of that, my dad gave me his old truck, and my husband and I used to take furniture to families that were trying to move,” Biltz said. “People who had been through trauma, women who had ended up homeless. There are dads who’ve been helped, too. It’s not all women, but most of them are single moms.”
Bonnie’s Hope also has a back-to-school campaign, an effort now handled by a cousin, Hillary Ritchey, of Middletown.
Biltz said the biggest individual accomplishment of Bonnie’s Hope was “re-homing” a woman with two small children with special needs.
“She went through social services and they got her a house and she had nothing,” she said. “So literally from nothing, we furnished the whole place, delivered it all.”
Biltz said she mainly receives requests from those in Miamisburg and Franklin, but also West Carrollton and Middletown, to a lesser degree.
Bonnie’s Hope was named after Biltz’s grandmother, who died a couple of years before the nonprofit was launched.
“I thought about a name and I thought ‘I need to make it personal,” and my grandma had nine children and all the kids in the neighborhood used to call her mamaw,” Biltz said. “She would feed any kid who walked up to her door. Through her, I learned to give a lot.”
The nonprofit has no facility and takes no money, she said. Everything is based upon donations through private sponsors who are responding to the need expressed to the group via private messages.
“This was all word of mouth for a long time until it about killed us physically because we’re in our 50s,” Biltz said. “My husband, Aaron, and I used to move furniture and drop things off, but we can’t really do that anymore, so whenever people want to donate something, they’ll say ‘must pick up’ and I’ll try sometimes to help get somebody to help them get it picked up.”
Bonnie’s Hope, in essence, is the conduit that helps connect those who need help to those who want to help others.
It’s also not something Biltz planned, but rather something that “just happened,” she said.
“It was such a small thing that turned into such a big thing,” she said. “I feel like when I leave this world, I’ll have done the best I can.”
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