Local entrepreneur launches T-shirt line to raise funds for Clark County food banks

A local accounting firm is asking residents to Feed the 'Field and Feel the Love. It’s doing so by way of a T-shirt fundraiser, from which 100 percent of the proceeds will go to food banks across Clark County.

Blake Shaffer started LWS Tax & Accounting Services in 2008. Since then, he’s grown the firm from a home business with one friend volunteering to help out into a downtown office with almost 20 employees. He also owns the downtown gym Springfield Health & Fitness.

Shaffer believes in helping the community in which he’s thrived. That’s why he organizes giveaways for families at Christmastime and why he finds ways to donate laptops to in-need college students. The team at LWS is organizing a charitable game show for families affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I want to support the community that supports me," Shaffer says.

"People are hungry and in need. How can I help them?"

Feed the Field — Feel the Love T-shirts will be available through May 10.His answer is the Feed the Field – Feel the Love T-shirt. Shaffer is footing production and shipping costs of the shirt so that all $15 of the consumer price will go toward food banks in Clark County.

Shaffer enlisted the help of his friend Thor Bisher, a third-grade teacher in the Clark-Shawnee Local School District, to design the shirts. The MacRay Company is helping with printing.
"I can give $2,000 to a local food bank, sure, but what if I make a shirt that has social meaning to it and put that original $2,000 into the shirts and end up making $5,000 for the food banks instead?" Shaffer says.

So far it’s working. Shaffer says that the shirts have raised more than $1,500, and he expects that they could go as high as $5,000 to $8,000 in sales before Monday.

"If every business in Springfield did something for the community, it would make the community that much stronger," Shaffer says.

The Feed the Field – Feel the Love t-shirts are available online through Sunday, May 10.

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