Mike Murphy’s Ride

By Bailey Corley

Mike Murphy became a CDK board member in October of 2017 and has been involved with them ever since. Mike got involved with CDK by meeting one of their former employees who was doing development work at a chamber of commerce event. They started talking. Mike’s first thought was, Who doesn’t like children and dogs? So he thought it would be a good organization to get involved with. He spoke with the former employee about that. Then he met with and talked to one of the board members and decided to commit some time to working with the agency. Mike stays involved with CDK because he really believes in their mission. “The executive director, Kristin Hartness, is a great person. So it’s a pleasure for me to do whatever I can to assist her to meet the mission of the agency.”

CDK works a lot with education around service dogs and service dogs for children in particular. CDK also has fundraising activities to help provide scholarships to help families that have a child who needs a service dog. CDK matters to Mike because he really believes in the mission of helping people in need,
particularly in this case children. These are children who need service dogs for whatever reason. There are a number of different reasons why people require service dogs and it’s very meaningful to him to participate.

Mike would like to see CDK continue to grow. It’s grown pretty well in the four plus years he has been involved with the organization. Mike would like CDK to provide more scholarships and larger scholarships. He thinks the more involved with the community CDK is, the more funds they’ll
get for scholarships. Mike said, “The organization isn’t well known. But the more involved we get, the more interest we will attract because of our mission. The more people involved will help us reach the mission to a greater extent than we already do.”

CDK is a national organization, so gaining publicity is very important. Kristin travels very frequently to get the word out about what CDK is doing. Mike believes that if CDK becomes more well known locally in central Massachusetts, there will be a greater impact to engage in activities. That will bring more publicity to the organization. Mike is benefiting from CDK by contributing to a worthy cause.
That’s the primary takeaway for him: it’s something he enjoys doing. The primary benefits for the clients are the educational and financial aspects. There are a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to service dogs and how they can help. There are always challenges. CDK goes a long way to fill in the gaps with education, advocacy, and scholarships.