A Prescription for Healthy Lakes: A Transformational Gift to Launch Lake Rx

In Episode 22 of The Lake Doctor Podcast, we make an exciting announcement: Grace College and the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams has received a transformative grant from Lilly Endowment to launch Lake Rx — a bold new initiative to create customized “prescriptions” for improving the health of local lakes.

Dr. Nate Bosch explains how Lake Rx will develop targeted, holistic solutions for individual lakes in Kosciusko County. These include constructing and restoring wetlands, incentivizing lake-friendly agricultural practices, promoting responsible boating, enhancing shoreline vegetation with native plants, and rebalancing lake ecosystems. The goal is to speed up lake recovery from decades of nutrient pollution and make measurable, visible improvements in water clarity and quality in tens of years rather than hundreds of years.

Nate and Suzie discuss the inspiration behind the program (including a memorable visit to ultra-clear Crater Lake), the importance of collaboration with community partners, and why sustained funding and community support will be critical for long-term success. This episode marks a major milestone for lake stewardship in northern Indiana.

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Learn more about the Lilly Center's work at https://lakes.grace.edu/.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to the Lake Doctor Podcast. I'm Susie Light, and with me is my co-host, the official Lake Nerd, Dr. Nate Bosh.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

How long am I going to have that title?

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Well, Nate, you own it.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Okay. All right. I am definitely a lake nerd.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

And that's a good thing for us.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Yes, I am a scientist at the core and love talking about our lakes. Um, we've got a big announcement we're making in this episode.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

We do, but we're gonna save the actual announcement toward the end, but it is really a big announcement. With lots of zeros. Lots of zeros. So um, Nate, now we're in the second season, and one of the things that you have talked about this season is something called Lake RX.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

What is that?

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Well, before we get into that, we should mention to people if they like the podcast, make sure that they're subscribing and they're commenting.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

And uh And they may have you may put your questions in the comments. We will answer those questions. Please share the podcast because we want people to have this information because it all makes us better stewards of the water that's entrusted to us.

What Lake Rx Really Means

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Right. So let's get to your question then. So inspiration behind Lake Rx.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

What wait, what is an RX?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Okay, so Rx would be shorthand for a prescription.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Ah, Lake Doctor. Now the Lake Doctor's got a Lake Rx. So a prescription for our lakes.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Yes. Uh but it's it's not just me, it's our whole team here at the Lily Center with all of the research and the education that we've invested in with our wonderful team, we've realized that as we've learned about these lakes and we've learned about problems that exist in our lakes, we also have learned about what the most strategic solutions are. So there we have the prescription for how to make our lakes cleaner in the future.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

So what might some of those pills, if you will, be that you might prescribe for a lake?

SPEAKER_00 2:27

Yes. So to be clear, we're talking about custom, holistic improvements to our lakes. So not so much the pill like we might be accustomed to a quick fix sort of a thing, but rather a holistic how can we see these lakes be cleaner sustainably for the future?

SPEAKER_01 2:49

So it individualized because Center Lake in Warsaw is much different than Palestine Lake that is south of Warsaw.

Why Lakes Get Murky And Weedy

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Right. Or Lake Wawase, which is our largest natural lake in Indiana, or Lake Tippecanoe, which is our deepest natural lake. All of these lakes are going to have uh slightly different solutions, the best solutions to help make those lakes cleaner.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

And so the things that that a clean lake has are things like clarity. What else?

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Yeah, so when we look at our lakes, and this would be true throughout the Midwestern United States and really throughout uh temperate lakes around the world, the problems are going to be too many nutrients that come into those lakes, which cause an overabundance of plant life. It could be aquatic macrophytes, which we call weeds when there's too many of them are not the right types. It could be algae, which are more technically known as phytoplankton. Some of those can be toxic algae.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Like blue-green algae.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

Blue-green algae, cyanobacteria. Those can cause problems for people and their pets. And so as we move these lake systems in an overly productive direction with too many nutrients, we're starting to get problems then. And so the lakes themselves and the communities around those lakes then start to suffer from some of those things.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

So some lakes might need to go on a um weed diet, and other lakes may need to have other kinds of filtering systems put in place. Right. And we've learned in these podcasts that wetlands are the kidneys, right? Kidneys, not lungs. Yeah, they're not. They filter out stuff.

The Prescription Toolkit For Clean Water

SPEAKER_00 4:38

So so you're getting into some of those solutions. Wetlands, we see as a big part of this for a number of our lakes, a big part of the prescription. Uh wetlands can intercept a lot of those nutrients before they get to the lakes. That's that kidney function of filtering. And so we see wetlands as a big part of this. We look at agricultural practices. Many of our lakes are in agricultural watersheds, so a lot of the water flowing into the lakes is coming through agricultural landscapes. And so partnering with those agricultural producers, uh, they could have more profitability, better crop yields, and we have cleaner lakes downstream, a win-win there. We also look in the water, looking at uh the ecosystem and rebalancing the ecosystem because we have things like zebra mussels, which are getting things out of whack in a many of our in many of our lakes. We can look at uh how boating is in our lakes and have responsible boating. We can look at shoreline vegetation around our lakes, having more native plants. We can look in the communities out around our lakes. We think of water literacy and some of our educational programs. Uh, we're continuing to do uh research into algae toxins themselves as well. So a whole suite of solutions going to be different and optimized from one lake to another, but we're really excited about what this will be able to do for our lakes.

Collaboration With Local Lake Partners

SPEAKER_01 6:08

And you talked about the staff people that you have here at the Lily Center. We know that it's not just you writing one prescription pad for a lake. You've got a whole bunch of people here working on that. But are you going to involve other community partners as you move forward?

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Yeah, so the Lily Center, uh, we're just over 15 years of existence now, uh, coming up to 20, and I think we've done an amazing job with research and educational pursuits, and that's taught us some things. The third area that we work in is collaboration, and that's with a lot of those partner organizations. But we want to invest even more of our resources into that collaborative sort of pillar of what we do at the Lilly Center. And Lake IX is a great vehicle for that because when we look at doing something like agricultural practices or creating or revitalizing a wetland, that's work to be done with partner organizations. For example, Soil and Water Conservation District already work very carefully with a lot of our agricultural community. And so, can we come alongside Soil and Water and help them do more and do even quicker some of the work they're already doing with producers? Or the Watershed Foundation or the Wawasee Area Conservancy Foundation with land and wetlands up in the watershed? Can we come alongside them and implement some of those things? Or our lake associations looking at some of the overabundance of weeds in our lakes. And can we look at maybe mechanical harvesting of those weeds as an alternative to the chemical herbicide spraying of those weeds in some of our lakes? And so this exercises, to use another sort of health analogy, exercises one of those parts of the Lily Center, which is collaboration, and we want to invest even more. And so that's going to take our whole team at the Lily Center. We've got researchers, we've got educators, and uh, we've all sort of done collaboration, but we want to move even towards specifically having some staff members looking towards collaboration every day of the week that they're working here at the Lily Center.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

And I think that um part of that catalyst to get to the point of Lake RX was what?

Crater Lake And The 103-Foot Wake-Up

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Yeah, that's a good question. So imagine, if you will, uh I'm on a vacation with my family out in the western United States. And we went to a lot of national parks. We love doing hiking. We had the goal of hitting all 50 states with our kids before they were uh 18 years old and starting to move out of the house. And we met that goal, all 50 states. And when we went to Oregon, we went to Crater Lake.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

I know where that is.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Yes. And my wife said I was like a kid at Disney World, so excited to go to this amazing lake. And I actually, because of the lake nerd title, right, I was able to go out on the lake with the researchers. My uh, my wife, Amanda, and our kids, they did some other hiking things while I got to go out on the lake. And so I'm out on this most pristine, probably the most pristine lake in the United States with these researchers. And and we did a secondisc measurement. You remember what that is? That's that little white and black disc.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

And you lower it.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

You lower it down clarity so you see the clarity of the water. So uh the closest lake to us, right here at the Lily Center, is Winona Lake. And in the summertime, that measurement might be three feet, um, for example, three feet of water clarity before you can no longer see that disc anymore down in the water. When I was out on Crater Lake with the researchers there with the National Park Service, I lowered the disc down 103 feet and could still see it. Yeah. And then just beyond that, then I lost sight. It was more that it was getting so far away I was losing sight with my own eyesight than it was a lack of clarity in the water. It was actually on a little crane with a winch system because it was just going and going. And I was like, how could I still see this? And so when I was there, seeing 103 feet visibility versus our local lakes here being closer to three feet of visibility, that was inspirational to me. Um, our Lily Center staff back here thought maybe I'd never come back to uh to Grace College and to Indiana because of how beautiful that was out there. I took my Lily Center tumbler as well while we were out on the lake, got a little bit uh warm and thirsty, and just took a scoop of water and just drank it directly from the lake as well. I mean, this is pristine water. And I got to thinking, what if our lakes here in Casciasco County, northern, north central Indiana, could start to approach the pristine cleanliness of Crater Lake in Oregon. Now, I'll be honest, we can't get totally there. Crater Lake sits at the top of a crater, hence its name, so there's very little watershed, very little opportunity for sediments and nutrients to get in that lake. But we certainly can do better with our lakes. And our lakes have had a history of 150, 200 years of degradation. But rather than being content with us working on cleaning up our lakes over the next 150, 200 years to try to get back to that more historical clean state, what if we can speed that process up to maybe 15 or 20 years? And that's where this Lake RX concept started to come from. Let's let's push this process forward faster. We've got data going back in our county to 1875 where we can already start to piece together trends in a trajectory of how our lakes have gotten degraded. Let's now reverse those trends and start moving our lakes in a cleaner direction. And so that's what Lake RX is about. We know we can't do it alone, which is why we're working with partners on this and uh and all sort of rowing in the same direction. It's also gonna take a lot of funding.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Well, and I think that's what the big news is about, but we're not ready to announce that yet. So yes, it's gonna take a lot of funding.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Yeah, and so as we look at this, it's gonna take tens of millions of dollars to be able to start to move uh the needle in the opposite direction from the or lower the sucky disk so it's clearer. Yes, so that we have these clearer lakes and cleaner lakes. And so uh really excited about it, um, but know that it's it's a big task in front of us as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

When you decided to move Lake Rx forward, you had to have some strategy into what your steps were going to be. Right. Can you talk about some of the first steps you took?

SPEAKER_00 13:27

Yeah, so as we started thinking about this with some of our supporters, some of our partners, we started thinking, okay, this is going to be a huge endeavor. We're gonna need to start somewhere. So let's start with a smaller effort with fewer lakes where we can start to build some momentum. And so, as we talked to some of those supporters and some partners, um, and you were one of those earlier advisors of ours as one of our founders of our organization, we started to hear themes come up of hey, this has to be visible. So those initial solutions that you start to implement, they have to be visible so people can see them, appreciate them, see that the money that they might have invested personally is going to a good cause and they're seeing a result from that. The other thing that we continued to hear was these impacts, these solutions need to be measurable. We need to get some early wins so as to sort of push this forward. We also know, as I said just a couple moments ago, it needs to be focused. We can't start Lake RX looking at thousands of lakes throughout the Midwestern United States. No, rather, let's pick a few lakes with a concentrated effort, start to show results, show uh visible impacts, and then start to grow from there and move throughout our lakes here in Casciasco County. And we really hope that Lake RX would be a model, not just for our county, but for lakes all across Indiana, all across the Midwest as well. But we need to start somewhere and we need to start seeing an impact so that uh that momentum can grow.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

You know, projects like this um take a lot of resources, not just people, and not just the resource of time, but the resource of funds.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

So you know a thing or two about that from your career.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Possibly, possibly. So part of your strategy in this is the work that we need to do and this is how we need to execute that work. Yeah, what was your strategy to look at how you might fund this work?

SPEAKER_00 15:48

So early on, I started thinking about, and this is some inspiration from you as well, Susie, is okay, well, if it's gonna cost tens of millions of dollars, what what's, you know, how are we going to come up with that amount? Say$100 million, how do you come up with$100 million?

SPEAKER_01 16:07

How do we come up with a million dollars, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Um and so we we were thinking, and and you helped us start thinking about uh family legacy, estate planning with some of our uh some of our donors, but uh it looked too far off, too too big, and so then we started to think about how do we start with this more focused effort to start this momentum. And so then we started thinking about you know fewer lakes with more visible, with measurable impact, so that we can grow up over time.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

So are we ready to talk about the big number yet?

SPEAKER_00 16:49

Sure, let's talk about it.

The Big Announcement And How It Works

SPEAKER_01 16:50

Okay. So tell us, Nate. Tell us. Like where's the drum roll? Oh, yeah, yeah. So tell us about this wonderful gift that came to the Lily Center.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yeah, so this is fitting that we're recording uh this today because we just sent out our press release today. We had let our uh our donors know about it first, some of our partners know about it, of course, our uh colleagues here at Grace College, um, but but just today announced that out more broadly. We received$10 million.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Okay, wait a minute. Let's go. That's a lot of zeros. A lot of zeros. Yeah. A$10 million grant from Lilly Endowment here in Indiana.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

And they are investing that money in such a way that$8 million will be endowed here for the Lilly Center, uh, where it will spin off hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

So endowment gifts are really important to organizations and to long-term projects like this because the corpus spins off annually dollars. It's invested permanently and spins off money for the work that you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Crucial things.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Yeah, and so you use the word corpus. So that$8 million then, also some people would call it the principal, that would then stay as eight million and and would grow over time to nine to ten to eleven to twelve million dollars, uh, outpacing inflation, but also growing. So the spending policy here at Grace College is four percent five-year running average of that corpus. And so it's a conservative amount then that comes off, your earnings come off, it's consistent year after year, despite stock market going up or down. And so you're right, it creates sustainability. We know that this Lake RX project is not going to be completed in the next three or four or five years. It's going to take, like I had said before, it's gonna take that 15 to 20 years, we hope, um, to have uh major impacts during that time. And so we need a funding mechanism that will continue to spin off those funds from the interest that's being earned on that endowment. So eight million dollars into endowment and two million, two million dollars to be spent over the next five years to kind of ramp up and create momentum for this this project.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

That is so exciting. That is like, oh, congratulations. Hooray for the Lily Center and hooray for Lake Rx.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Yeah, we're we're very excited, feeling very blessed right now, also a little overwhelmed because of that amount of money and that amount of responsibility to implement those funds. You know, Lily Endowment, you've worked with them over your career at the Community Foundation, and they are behind a lot of the best things that have happened in Indiana. And so there's an expectation there that we are going to be investing these funds and having a big impact in the communities around our lakes.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

And the beauty of this is it's replicable in other places. So you're focused on Casciasco County, but what you have learned and what you're going to implement in Lake RX can be replicated in southern Indiana, in Michigan, in Ohio.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Right. It is really exciting uh to think that we're developing a model that can change how lakes are improved for a much larger geographic area.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Gives me goosebumps. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

Yeah.

Why Cleaner Lakes Matter To Everyone

SPEAKER_01 20:43

And for the Lily Center, and for our community. You know, that's the beauty of this is like Grace is Grace College and the Lily Center is the beneficiary of this wonderful, wonderful gift. But it's community that is the benefit of the work that you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Yes. And that's what I'm excited about as well. Because when you look at lakes as an important part of our communities here in northern Indiana, the lakes are the reason that families continue to gather together year after year. Lakes are the reason that many of our communities have the income through property taxes and other means to have wonderful schools, to have great social services, to have amenities of restaurants and grocery stores and little shops that normally wouldn't be there if it were not for the lakes.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

And recreation opportunities.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

And recreation opportunities available to all people. So our county, just on its own, has seven public beaches which are open to everybody. Anyone from our Communities locally or even from visitors from far away can come and freely access these lakes through these public swimming beaches. And many of our lakes, not all 100, but many of our lakes also have public access boat ramps. So somebody with a canoe or a kayak or a stand-up paddleboard or a fishing boat or a pontoon can come and bring that watercraft onto one of our lakes and enjoy all the things that the lake has to provide. And we should also say that these lakes provide for the economies of our communities as well. We did, and I think we've mentioned it on this podcast before, we did a research project a few years back and found over$300 million comes into just Casciasco County, just one county in Indiana every year because of our lakes. Now we can scale that up throughout Indiana, and we've done that in an estimated way, and it's billions of dollars are brought into the state of Indiana because of the lakes. That's specifically because of the lakes through all of the services and all of the uh community sort of quality of place sorts of opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

So our lakes are not deplorable, like we're not in a horrible position with our current lakes.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

I would people often ask, you know, how good or how bad are they? I would characterize our lakes, and there's variation within uh even the lakes just here in our county, but I would say they are good, but they could be better.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

That's good.

SPEAKER_00 23:41

And that's what we're going for is the better.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

And things around the lake that help make them better are things like wetlands and taking precautionary measures so that you're not if you move your boat from one lake to another lake, you're not dropping off invasive species into the next lake.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

And Lake RX is gonna help educate us about those things.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Yeah, so there's gonna be a number of projects that we will work with our partner organizations on, but there's also gonna be some solutions that are gonna be more communication solutions where we're going to be empowering our lake residents, our community members, our visitors to more responsibly interact with our lakes. Those would be things like uh responsible boating, like I mentioned a little bit before, right? With how to use boats on our lakes so that we're not contributing to some of the problems, but instead we're contributing to a cleaner lake in the future. It could also be things like looking at vegetation around the lakes, which I think I also mentioned, looking at native vegetation, which is going to have deep root systems and help intercept excess nutrients as they come towards the lake off the land, but also as waves come from the lake towards the land, that vegetation can help intercept some of that wave energy and hold on to the soils and keep nutrients and sediments from coming in that way too.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

We might even have a couple of podcasts about that, mightn't we?

SPEAKER_00 25:15

I think we have. I think folks can look back at the library now of episodes that we've accumulated.

Where To Find Research And Updates

SPEAKER_01 25:22

And if somebody wanted to look at the research about the economic study that you did, where would they find that?

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Yeah, so that would be on our website, lakes.grace.edu, and there's a research tab there. And if you click on that, you can see some of our original research publications, and you can see uh boating study, you can see we've done some work on vegetation in our lakes, of course, uh algae toxins as we've talked about, but uh our research is all there uh freely to the public, as well as we come out with annual publication called Beneath the Surface, which has all of our summer lake data and also the stream data that we collect.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

And if somebody wanted to get more information, how would they do that?

SPEAKER_00 26:07

Well, if you want even more information than that and you want to stay even more up to date, then our e-newsletter would be the best uh mechanism for that. So sign up for our monthly e-newsletter and we'll keep you apprised as to all of the Lake RX developments and what new projects and partnerships and things are we working on.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Might we have a podcast about the work that Lake RX is doing in the future?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

I think we can expect several podcasts that will be looking at Lake RX and what sort of uh impacts it's it's having, even in its uh relative infancy as we just get started and and start to build momentum.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

I am so thrilled for our community who will be the beneficiary of this awesome work thanks to the lovely gift that you've received from Lily Endowment and Nate and your whole team. Congratulations on a successful launch for Lake RX.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

Yeah, thank you. And now the work begins.

Why More Support Still Matters

SPEAKER_01 27:15

And now the work begins. And you know, one of the questions that um that people might have is we've got this big gift from Lily Endowment. Do you need additional supporters?

SPEAKER_00 27:29

You were supposed to ask me that question. Yeah, I was. We had that on our ask me that question, Dave. So what do you think, Susie? You you spent your career um in fundraising with the community foundation, talking to donors, talking to granting organizations. You were a granting organization yourself. Um, what what's kind of the the rationale behind that? How does a donor look at that?

SPEAKER_01 27:52

Well, personally, I like to donate to successful things. So my donations will continue to come to the Lily Center. And I think very astute donors are going to understand the work that you're doing is going to need millions of dollars. Right. This first gift is the first gift. Yeah. But the opportunity to invest and to donate to something critical for our community that will be highly successful, look at the 15 plus years you've had of how the Lilly Center has grown and next steps that you've always managed to take. Of course, people are going to want to be part of this. And I'm a proud supporter of yours.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Good. And I think part of that we're going to need to talk with our supporters about is we're not going to stop doing the research and education that we've been doing. We might do it slightly different, but we're going to continue to do those things. So we'll continue to need that operating support that people have provided to do those things. And you might say, even with Lake RX, those things become even more important because the research is going to show how we're doing. Are these solutions working? Or do we need to pivot and move in some different directions with solutions? The education is going to help with some of these solutions as we get the word out in our communities. And also education. Maybe there's different ways we need to consider educating the community members through around these lakes. So that work will continue. So we need folks to continue to support that. But now there's Lake RX as well, which is a new part of what we're doing, and that will require additional funds in addition to this large grant. As you said, this large grant is amazing, but it's not going to pay for everything that we need to get done. It's just the first step. So we'll rely on you and others to even increase their giving going forward.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

We hope so. Yeah. We hope so.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

But I think you bring a good point up. Certainly to me, it would seem logical that if an organization gets a large grant, well, they don't need my money. But that's not the case.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

That is not the case.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

As granted funds come in, good work starts to get done even more. And with that momentum comes even more need for doing that good work and growing that good work. And so we hope people will see, as you described, see the Lily Center as a worthy organization to be invested in. And the work we're doing is worthy to be invested in. And as we continue to have more and more impact, people will see their investment as more and more important here at the Lily Center. And that fundraising success would increase in the future, as we've seen it do over these last 15 years plus.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

And your challenge, part of your challenge, not only to do this work, but to be able to communicate to our community members why this is important to them, how it's making a difference in our in our community, our world, our water. And you're all up for the task.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Yes, we are. We are excited. This we look at as sort of the next phase of the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams here at Grace College. We're proud of the work we've done to date, and that really gives us then the foundation to go into this next phase, uh, which is Lake RX and having a bigger, faster impact and making our lakes cleaner.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

A personalized prescription for lake improvement.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Hot dog.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

That's right.

How To Give Including IRA Options

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Excited about this. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

Thanks for listening to the Lake Doctor podcast. We are encouraging you to comment and to share. This is an important message, and we're really thrilled with the opportunity that Lily Endowment has gifted to the Lily Center for Lake RX. But we need more support because there's a lot of work to do.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Yeah, and so if I could just highlight that a little bit more. We talked about people signing up for our e-newsletter monthly. So maybe you're just hearing about the Lily Center for Lakes and Streams or Lake RX for the first time. And this is something we'd ask you to invest in is a little bit of time and attention by signing up for our e-newsletter. So that can be done on our website, lakes.grace.edu, and learn more about what we're doing and stay updated. For those listeners and viewers who are already sort of bought in and they're already paying attention, maybe you consider investing financially in what we're doing. And again, our website, lakes.grace.edu, will give you all the info. And as you've helped me over the years, Susie, as a fundraising cheerleader and coach, there's lots of ways people can give that are available on our website. And then for those who are already financially investing, like we talked about, you and your husband are supporters. We're looking for people to step up and help with additional funding for this Lake RX project. We're really excited about the impact that it's going to have.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

And you know, one of the cool ways, I'm of an age now where I have an IRA that I have to take an annual distribution from. And instead of taking that annual distribution as income, I can make a qualified charitable distribution to charities of my choice. Guess what my choice is?

SPEAKER_00 33:51

Thank you, Susie. And that's a great tax benefit decision for you, too, right? Because if you would have taken that distribution for you and your husband to go out for dinner or go on a vacation or something, then you would be income taxed. Whereas when you give it to a charity, then it's free and clear.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

I don't have to pay an income tax. I don't get a charitable deduction. I don't need one at this point. You know, it is it is from my IRA, and that's a fun thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Yeah. And we certainly appreciate seeing those donations come in each year.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

I love seeing the results. You are doing good work here.

SPEAKER_00 34:31

Good. Thank you.

Closing Thanks And What’s Next

SPEAKER_01 34:32

Thank you. Thanks for watching. Stay tuned for more episodes of the Lake Doctor Podcast when the doctor is in.