About Us

From its beginnings in late 2006 to the current day.  Auto Racers For Kids Charities Inc. of Erie PA was first created in late 2006 with a meeting of the general manager of Lake Erie Speedway Brandon Kaczay and David Stewart of Stewart Financial Services.

They had decided to develop a program that would benefit local children's charities using auto racing and golf as a main theme for raising funds.  Since the beginning in 2007, Auto Racers For Kids Charities has distributed nearly $80,000 to 13 children's charities in our local area. Auto Racers For Kids Charities became the track charity in 2007 with Lake Erie Speedway being one of the major corporate sponsors of the charity.  In 2007 Auto Racers For Kids Charities teamed up with the Make-A-Wish Foundation to run our first event.  All proceeds of the event went to the Erie Chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.  Our event was held in May of 2007 with the Golf being played at the prestigious upper course at Peek-N-Peak resort and a night of pavement racing at Lake Erie Speedway.  This was a great success and we raised close to $40,000, distributing about $15,000 to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Auto Racers For Kids Charities set their sights much higher in 2008 as they broke away from Make-A-Wish and created their own corporation.  The event in 2008 was held in September with again the golf portion at the prestigious upper course at Peek-N-Peak Resorts and a night of racing at the Lake Erie Speedway. This event featured 13 of the biggest name dirt drivers in this region with two of them being national names running with the World of Outlaws circuit, which is a national dirt racing circuit.

In the 2008 version of The Thunder On The Mountain Golf Classic and Dirt Invades Lake Erie Speedway, we had Scott Bonnell and several of the areas top sprint cars participating along with the dirt stars and many of the pavement stars running on September 17, 2008 at Lake Erie Speedway.  We had approximately 3 ½ hours of some of the best racing the Erie area has ever seen as the dirt stars challenged the pavement and some of the best pavement racers putting on a fantastic show.  The proceeds grossed  nearly $57,000 for children's charities and were distributed to 10 local children's charities.

In 2009, Auto Racers For Kids Charities had four major fund raisers that allowed us to distribute $34,000 to the charities listed below:

• Children's Miracle Network
• Sarah Reed Children's Center
• Hunters Hope
• Kiwanis of Erie
• Newspapers in Education
• Operation Warm
• Butterflies for Kids
• Make-A-Wish
• Junior Achievement
• SafeNet
• Achievement Center