Twenty Years Later, NAR Honors Original ‘Good Neighbor’ Scottsdale Realtor® Gil Gillenwater
CHICAGO – During its annual convention from November 8-11, the National Association of Realtors® celebrated the 20th year of the Good Neighbor Awards, which honor Realtors® for their volunteer efforts to improve the lives of people in need. Fifty current and past Good Neighbor Award honorees attended the celebration this weekend in San Francisco, including Scottsdale Realtor® Gil Gillenwater and the three other living, original 2000 Good Neighbor Award winners. A photo of the original winners together can be seen below.
Gil Gillenwater founded the Rancho Feliz Charitable Foundation after visiting Agua Prieta in Mexico intending to deliver food to the poor. Inspired and astounded by what he saw, his nonprofit has spent the past 32 years raising and investing over $10 million to build homes, education centers, child care centers and orphanages while funding 2,000 scholarships and distributing an untold amount of food and medical supplies.
The infrastructure erected by this foundation has allowed entire families to lift themselves from extreme poverty. In total, Rancho Feliz dormitories have hosted more than 20,000 volunteers who feed 5,000 people each week.
To acknowledge the ongoing impact Gillenwater and his three counterparts have made, each winner’s respective nonprofit was awarded a $2,400 grant on Saturday, funded by Good Neighbor Award sponsors realtor.com and Wells Fargo.
“We are incredibly proud of the cumulative impact that Good Neighbors have had in the U.S. and across the globe,” says NAR President Vince Malta, broker at Malta & Co., Inc., in San Francisco. “Gil Gillenwater and the other winners recognized annually for the past two decades represent the best of America’s Realtors® – those who sacrifice so much time and talent so their neighbors can live better, more fulfilling lives.”
Over the past 20 years of Good Neighbor recognition:
- $1.3 million has been granted to Realtor®-led nonprofits.
- More than 200 nonprofit organizations have been funded.
- Good Neighbors’ impact has been felt in 40 states, Puerto Rico and 16 countries.
- More than 4,000 Realtors® have applied for NAR’s Good Neighbor Award.
The National Association of Realtors® is America’s largest trade association, representing more than 1.4 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.
rfadmin November 14th, 2019
Posted In: Awards
Rancho Feliz Charitable Foundation is a volunteer based, multi-national, secular, non-profit 501(c)3 organization. We reside in Scottsdale, Arizona and serve in the community of Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico. We are volunteers committed to redefining charity.
