You’ll meet Lisa Cassman, an author and counselor who’s turning her message into movement by securing sponsors to help her donate life-changing books to schools and families. You’ll be inspired by Laurence Baer, whose global music initiative “Peace Stars” is using creativity and collaboration to spark social change. And finally, we’ll highlight the Oakville Festivals of Film & Art (OFFA), a dedicated arts organization that transformed its sponsorship model—and its future—through resilience, reinvention, and the power of strategic support.
Each of these stories reflects the heart of what we do at Raise a Dream: helping dreamers build sustainable, values-aligned partnerships that expand their reach and deepen their impact.
Lisa Cassman
About Lisa:
Lisa Cassman is a licensed counselor, life coach, minister, author and speaker. Through stories, Scripture, and step-by-step insights, you'll discover how to let go of what you could be hanging onto.
She has a PhD degree in Clinical Pastoral Counseling from the Colorado Theological Seminary, which is accredited through the National Christian Counseling Association (NCCA), and she is also certified to administer the Arno Profile System (A.P.S.) report, which is a personal identification/inventory.
To date, Lisa has written nine books: one poetry, four self-help, two devotionals, and two for children. Lisa is a monthly guest on Sirius XM radio with Tim Ridley channel 146 (Every third Wednesday at 5:30 am). Together, she and her husband have four children and twelve grandchildren.
Lisa’s Win / Celebration / Favourite Tip:
Raise a Dream has definitely shown me ways to look for sponsors; I wouldn't normally ask people or businesses for anything without knowing they are receiving something in return. Now, knowing that people will help with what they are passionate about and after doing research on people or businesses that have done donations before for the community or those that demonstrate compassion towards families and children, I talk to more people to let them know I am looking for sponsors or funding to help others, not necessarily me. These people are more willing to donate to help.
Asking to donate books for a cause or a group is what I have found most beneficial. Being able to donate to schools and other organizations is what makes my heart happy. I have also had someone purchase books for each person in attendance at a retreat.
~ Lisa Cassman
PhD, Clinical Pastoral Counseling
www.LisaCassman.com
Connect with Lisa:
Laurence Baer
About Laurence:
Laurence Baer is an entrepreneur and songwriter who has dedicated his life for the last 50 years to the realization of God’s dream for a peaceful, harmonious world. In addition to helping launch and develop The Global Economic Action Institute (serving as executive assistant to its three Chairman: Hon Robert Anderson, former US Secretary of the Treasury; Hon Eugene McCarthy, former US Senator and Presidential Candidate; and Sir Robert Muldoon, former Prime Minister of New Zealand), Laurence has written and produced three award-winning CDs. His song, “White Pass Railroad” was included on the Grammy-nominated “Family Circle” (2009) CD by the Del McCoury Band.
Acting as its pro-bono CEO, Laurence, together with his associate of 45 years, Russ Allen, is currently launching Peace Stars, a global music competition. Through collaboration, participating artists will show that it is possible to transcend historic conflicts with vision and mutual respect. Each winning entry will be incorporated into a 15-minute professional video highlighting the artists and the historic conflict. By energetically promoting these inspiring videos on social media, Peace Stars will shine powerful spotlights on those historic conflicts and nurture a growing awareness that this is, in fact, the time to end violence and war and build a culture of peace.Laurence’s Win / Celebration / Favourite Tip:
Following a strong recommendation from a longtime contact, Rob Sayre, who reviewed our Peace Stars project and pronounced, "You are going to need some serious sponsors," I connected with Charmaine Hammond. With her consummate professionalism and an extraordinarily big heart, she quickly and enthusiastically came up to speed on this visionary effort and helped break down the challenge into two phases.
Recognizing the first step is to raise the seed funding required to produce a pilot video, Charmaine introduced me to Victoria Bennett from BMW Consultants so that I could tap into their years of experience in crowdfunding and social media campaigns. Thanks to Charmaine's advice and feedback and with great help and guidance from BMW, our first music video campaign is now in full swing and you can read more about the pilot project here.
Once our seed capital is raised, we will create a professionally produced pilot video and begin step two. We will launch our campaign to secure sponsors to cover our minimum annual budget. With that budget, we will produce a minimum of seven new videos each year and achieve many, many, millions of views globally. I am tremendously excited by this project. I couldn’t ask for a better mentor and advisor than Charmaine.
~ Laurence Baer
CEO
Peace Stars
Connect with Laurence:
OFFA
About OFFA:
Established in 2014, the Oakville Festivals of Film & Art (OFFA) is a true community-oriented festival, focused on bringing the best features, documentaries, and short films to cinephiles in southern Ontario. Oakville’s only independent film festival, OFFA showcases and premieres the feature films, shorts and documentaries of established and award-winning auteurs, as well as the works of new and experienced local Canadian filmmakers. The festival presents over 100 films at our annual festival, many of which originate in Oakville or neighbouring communities. Check out the 2025 Oakville Film Festival here.
OFFA’s Win / Celebration / Favourite Tip:
OFFA is celebrating its 12th year of bringing the only multi-day film and arts festival to our community of Oakville, Ontario. This volunteer run organization has made it through several difficult years impacted by the pandemic, the Hollywood union strikes, and other challenges including the loss of most of its sponsors due to the pandemic. Our dedicated board of directors has been integral to this organization.
We secured a grant in 2023 to revamp our sponsorship program and hired Charmaine Hammond from Raise A Dream to work with us to rebuild our sponsorship offerings and to create a new, dynamic web page & portal for sponsors, a one-stop-shop for sponsors for everything they need. Rebuilding our sponsorship platform turned out to be a great win for OFFA! We have seen a great interest in the new platform and began bringing on new sponsors much earlier than we usually do. We were also inspired to do a Sponsorship Appreciation event in November that brought on two brand new sponsors for OFFA.
Our team is reinvested in bringing on new sponsors, and we feel that we have the tools now to make this happen. Thanks so much to Charmaine and Raise A Dream!
~ Wendy Donnan
Oakville Festivals of Film and Art Programmer and Executive Director
OFFA.ca
Connect with OFFA:
Building Dreams Together
From personal passion projects to large-scale festivals and global peace initiatives, the path to building sponsorship relationships often begins with one brave conversation, a bold ask, or a reinvention of how you share your story. What Lisa, Laurence, and the OFFA team demonstrate is that when you match clarity of purpose with the right tools and guidance, amazing things can happen.
At Raise a Dream, we’re honoured to support and celebrate the visionaries who are ready to create change and build dreams—together. Whether you’re just starting out or rebuilding after a challenge, remember: partnerships thrive on authenticity, shared values, and a compelling invitation to be part of something meaningful. Let these stories inspire your next step… and your next ask.
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