New Foundation Raises $45,000 for Children's Hospital

When Adam and Danielle Yenish began kicking around ideas for how to say thanks to a team of doctors at the Shriner's Hospital of Philadelphia for their expert help treating the Yenishs' young son, they first envisioned a golf outing. 

But Adam noted the more they discussed it, the less it seemed like the right idea—what they really wanted to do was to figuratively and perhaps literally, raise a glass to the hospital's staff and say thank you.

On Jan. 26, with more than 340 people gathered at the Bridgewater Marriott, they did just that... oh, and they collected $45,000 for the hospital along the way with a fundraising dinner.

"It was extraordinary, it really was," Yenish said Wednesday. He said the event turned into one of those life-changing dates you never forget: "It's like you have your birthday, your wedding day, the birth of your children...and then something like this.

"It gives your life meaning," he added.

Yenish had hoped to collect $20,000 or $25,000 for their newly-organized charity, the Raise Your Glass Foundation, with the dinner but ticket sales started to take off in the days before the event.

"We are just overwhelmed by the support," he said.

All that's left is for the couple to present the check—and a larger, promotional copy of the check—to the hospital, which will be done within a few weeks when the family returns for another checkup for Anthony John, the couple's 3-year-old son arthrogryposis, a congenital disorder causing joints to stiffen, which impairs development and movement, as well as a pituitary disorder.

Though born with the disorder, Danielle Yenish says treatments by Doctors Harold vanBosse and Scott Kozin have made "the impossible, possible," enabling "AJ" to now run and play.

There's one other order of business Adam Yenish noted: planning for the next Raise Your Glass Foundation event, which may be a dinner and a golf outing sometime towards the end of the summer.