When she was a young girl of about seven years old, Laura Huth would gather her siblings Caroline and Jason along with other neighborhood kids with a directive to clean up trash in the forest preserve along Brainard Avenue. A long time before recycling and cleaning the environment were on people’s minds, Laura thought it was important.

Little did she know that that was the beginning of her life work.

Having spent 13 years in the management and consulting arm of many local, state and nationally affiliated nonprofit organizations, Huth now leads the team at do good Consulting. She has applied all of her hands-on experience to form the Urbana-based consulting firm that helps any aspect of nonprofit organizations. Do good Consulting will help with fundraisers, seminars, and helping the organization realize their potential and the impact they may have on the community. Many times a nonprofit organization does not have the resources on-staff to run a direct mail campaign, plan a fundraiser or direct their efforts in a constructive manner. This is where Huth and her team of experts can help.

Before founding do good Consulting in 2006, Huth was very involved in the city of Urbana and served on the City Council for close to eight years, during which time she promoted neighborhood preservation, downtown redevelopment programs and civic involvement. Additionally, she has served on many boards and has volunteered with the Common Ground Food Co-op to help with its expansion. Huth also helped found three groups in the community — Save Our Trees; the award winning Historic East Urbana Neighborhood Association; and the Illinois Student Environmental Network, a statewide training organization serving college students on more than 100 Illinois campuses.

This year, Huth received new accolades for her hard work.

The Central Illinois Business magazine held its first ever 40 Under 40 Awards. There were more than 130 nominees and from that pool Huth was one of 40 chosen as an outstanding leader in the business community of Central Illinois. She invited her parents to the luncheon honoring the inductees Sept. 10.

“We were much honored to see Laura up there and it was a very nice event. We didn’t know what to expect, as Laura did not give us much detail. It was much bigger than we thought,” said her mom, Pat.

Not only was Huth named in the top 40 under 40 category, she received the Woman of the Year Award from the publication.

As editor Greta Weiderman said in her introduction of the article, “And while they are all successful in their work endeavors, they have something else in common: they value family and strive to make their communities better places.”

Do good Consulting was a vision for Huth. She has now grown it into a full-scale donor fundraising consulting firm that can help with strategies, organizational growth and planning, storytelling, image and service enhancement and investing local businesses and media in the work of area charities. Her sister, Caroline, also helps with the graphic design and copy writing of the various brochures and newsletters that do good Consulting produces.

In a recent issue of the newsletter, Caroline said, “Call me biased, but I don’t think there is anyone more qualified to help nonprofits stay focused, do their good deeds and guide them into staying in the black.”

As for Laura, in the most recent issue of the newsletter, she affirms, “The sum of my experiences growing up … have taught me that little things can make a huge difference. It matters not if we have just one hour or 100 to volunteer. Do it. It matters not if we have only $1 or $100 to donate. Do it. It matters not if you are just one person or a crowd of 100. Speak out. Do it.”

For more information about do good Consulting, its Web site is www.dogoodconsulting.org.

Any questions, comments, ideas for Life in La Grange Park? E-mail me at lifelgp@comcast.net.