Following the April 15 blasts during last year’s Boston Marathon, Chris Mathison and Nick Leydon knew they wanted to do something to give back to their city, which was suddenly broken. The friends’ band had been playing a set at a Marathon Monday party at the Lansdowne Pub in Fenway when they caught wind of what had happened.
“I was feeling an obligation to help out,” said Mathison. “But I wanted to do something more than a one-off donation to the One Fund.”
Along with friends and family who also wanted to help out, Mathison and Leydon began brainstorming an event. But, just one event wasn’t going to do, either. So they took a big leap – they decided to host 26 events to support the One Fund throughout the entire year leading up to the next Boston Marathon, and from that idea, The Next 26 was born.
“One event wasn’t enough. Two to three months down the road, [momentum] dies down, and this was a way to keep that going as much as we could,” said Mathison. “So we decided to do 26 events in honor of the 26 miles of the marathon.”
Now, with the months leading up to the marathon winding down, Mathison and Leydon and the rest of the Next 26 team have 16 events under their belt, with 10 more to go. The next, Boulders for Boston, will be held this Sunday at Brooklyn Boulders, a fitness expo that will introduce guests to local fitness and health businesses and vendors with all the proceeds going to the One Fund.
The events that Next 26 has hosted fit into the nonprofit’s overall framework of social, sport and service. Many of the gatherings blend two or three of those into one event, like Boulders for Boston, which raises money while bringing people together for a fun day of fitness.
Past events include Laugh Strong, an all-night comedy showcase at Laugh Boston that sold over 200 tickets – one of their biggest events, answering the question of whether or not an event supporting marathon relief would draw a crowd in November – and a Happy Hour Sock Drive for the Homeless, which took place earlier this January.
Through the events, Mathison and Leydon met a great community of supporters – people who have given them connections for future events and some who even joined the Next 26 team – along with first responders and survivors. The relationship between these groups of people affected by the tragedy inspired one of their upcoming events.
“A lot of these people want to meet each other, or the person who saved them that day. But, they didn’t have the means to do it. So we’re going to hold a mixer as a way to have them get together,” said Mathison.
For their last event, Leydon and Mathison’s band will play at the Lansdowne, just like they did in April of 2013, and this time, the party will be a Next 26 party, capping off a year of effort in boosting the city back to normal.
“We didn’t want this to be a fad,” said Leydon. “This was too important to us, for supporting Boston, to feel like a fad. So we wanted to make it a commitment for a year, and do all these things that make Boston stronger.”
Click through the slideshow below to get a glimpse of what The Next 26 has done so far, and to get involved in the last leg of their project, start by signing up for Sunday’s event. Tickets are available here, and you can follow The Next 26 on Twitter for more updates.
