Couple Has Unique Donation to Help Build New Fitness Center

If you want to help a worthwhile cause, donating doesn't mean you have to clear out your bank account.

For instance, a Grand Forks couple donated about 250,000 yards of clay to the Grand Forks Park District. And now it's saving money on one of its biggest projects.

"I approached John Staley with the idea of donating a certain amount of clay and he jumped at the chance," Robert Vollrath said.

Vollrath and his wife JoAnn donated around 250,000 yards of clay to the Grand Forks Park District. The district sold 50,000 yards and made life a little easier for a local construction company. R.J. Zavoral and sons need clay to close up the old landfill.

"It's a little hard to get clay from our pits in East Grand Forks with the construction going on on Gateway and Demers. Just getting the material across town didn't seem feasible," Zavoral said.

So while the company is using the clay to build up the landfill, the park district is using it to tear down some expenses.

"We're selling 50,000 of it, and that's yielding 35,000 in actual cash to go towards funding this project," Park District director John Staley said.

And that will help take care of part of Choice Health and Fitness's $23 million construction bill.

Who thinks of donating clay?" Staley sad.

"If you can take a commodity and let the park board turn it into cash, that's what it is," Vollrath said.

And here's what it is for tax payers:

"From the word 'go,' our goal was to do this without adding any tax dollars to it and that's been the major advantage," Staleys aid.

And it's prove that a little creativity, can become a big donation.

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