Lehigh Valley nonprofit receives $300,000 state grant to expand services
Rep. Mike Schlossberg November 21, 2022 | 1:50 PM
HARRISBURG, Nov. 21 – State Rep. Mike Schlossberg announced today that he secured $300,000 for Danny’s Ride, a Lehigh Valley non-profit organization that provides rides to treatment and other community services for people living with substance abuse disorders to support their recovery.
“Danny’s Ride is helping to fill a critical need in our community,” Schlossberg said. “The opioid epidemic continues to take its toll on our region, robbing families of loved ones. Many families will gather around the table at Thanksgiving with broken hearts. Recovery is possible, but it needs to be easier. A simple ride can make all the difference in the first steps to recovery, and Danny’s Ride is working to do that.”
Danny’s Ride was established by Nancy Knoebel, who left her position as CEO of Easterseals Eastern PA which she held for over 20 years, in January 2022 so she could focus on building Danny’s Ride into an organization that would significantly mitigate the barrier of transportation in recovery. The organization was founded to honor the memory of Nancy’s son, Danny Teichman, who died in November 2016 after taking kratom. Kratom is widely available and legal, and the dangers are not well understood. Danny had been in recovery from opioid addiction, had gone off his medication-assisted treatment (Suboxone) with his doctor’s approval, and took kratom to mitigate the effects of suboxone withdrawal.
Knoebel’s background in nonprofit leadership, along with an MBA from the Wharton School in finance and health care management, provide the necessary skills and capacity to successfully meet Danny’s Ride's mission and vision. The Danny’s Ride board consists of other community professionals, each of whom brings a technical skill and a commitment to recovery. There are currently no paid staff at Danny’s Ride.
“The funding presents a tremendous opportunity for Danny's Ride to grow exponentially,” said Knoebel. “As a new nonprofit organization, building infrastructure to support the full implementation of the mission is extremely challenging.”
The funds Schlossberg secured will be used to:
- Expand transportation to essential services and programs that support recovery beyond the existing Lehigh/Northampton areas.
- Collect outcomes to support future expansion of services through DDAP, Medicaid, other counties and other funding sources.
- Launch a digital transportation feature to provide better service in real time and key data points, all in an effort to create a model for recovery and for other related organizations to access Danny’s Ride on behalf of their clients within established guidelines.
- To grow the reach of Danny's Ride, hire professionals to assist with building awareness and developing relationships with counties, organizations and others across the state and to expand our fundraising capacity to enable more people to be served.
“We will be able to help many more people across the state who are living in recovery from substance use disorder who need help with transportation to access critical resources in their recovery journeys,” Knoebel said. “We are thrilled by this opportunity and give many thanks to Representative Schlossberg for providing for the support in advocating for our mission and helping us to secure this funding.”