The Charlotte Observer

Good Fellows Pass $1 Million Fundraising Goal

Thank you to our consultants, partners and friends who joined our table at yesterday’s Good Fellows Club lunch and who opened their hearts (and wallets!) to help raise a record setting $1 million+ in donations to help the working poor across the Charlotte region.

Read more about yesterday’s record-setting event in The Charlotte Observer.

Croixstone Hosts Table Today at Annual Good Fellows Luncheon

Croixstone Consulting founder Mark Weber, a long-term member of The Good Fellows Club, is hosting a table at today’s annual Christmas luncheon at the Charlotte Convention Center.

A club of 1,700 business and civic leaders, The Good Fellows Club was founded in 1917 by a group of men at Charlotte’s Second Presbyterian Church. Through the years, the club has evolved into a charity that has raised millions to help the working poor who often can’t get aid at other nonprofits.

The club’s board of directors consists of a number of well-known Charlotte business leaders including:

W. Frank Dowd, IV, President
John W. Harris, Vice President
Thomas E. Meckley, Treasurer

Last year, The Good Fellows Club raised more than $500,000 at the organization’s annual Christmas luncheon. Read more about last year’s event courtesy of The Charlotte Observer.

What is the State of NC’s Economy?

So what is the state of North Carolina’s economy?

A “mixed bag” according to a recently published story in The News & Observer (Raleigh) in conjunction with The Charlotte Observer and McClatchy. The media organizations assessed the state of North Carolina with a focus on 20 measures of how the state is doing compared with previous years and compared with Georgia, Virginia and the rest of the nation.

Key findings:

NC has been adding jobs at a pace of about 7,000 a month over the past few years.
The state had above-average job growth from July 2015 to July 2016.
NC’s economy performs similarly to Georgia’s and worse than Virginia’s.
Wages are back to pre-recession levels, but people are also more likely to be in poverty.
Employment in NC is better than average — but only if people who have given up on job hunts aren’t counted. A smaller share of North Carolina adults are in the labor force than Americans as a whole.
For each of the last 20 months, companies in both North and South Carolina have reported being unable to fill open jobs.
At 4.6 percent, the state’s unemployment rate is better than the national average. The state has 290,000 more jobs than it did in 2007.

Read the full article here.