MARSHALL –The Maggie Jean Foundation will be hosting its fifth annual golf tournament at Marshall Golf Club on Monday at 1 p.m. Proceeds from the event will be used to support the non-profit’s mission to support women and families who have experienced pregnancy, adoption, infant or stillbirth loss.

The event is a four-person team scramble fundraiser. Those interested can register, sponsor or donate online at maggiejeanfoundation.com. Registration costs $125.

Non-golfers are also encouraged to support the foundation by donating toward the foundation’s Boxes of Blessings, which are sent to affected families and include a pendant to honor the lost pregnancy or child, flower seeds, a candle and a hand-knit or hand-sewn blanket and hat appropriate for the gestational age.

The foundation was started by former Marshall girls golf coach Nancy Blanchard and former Southwest Minnesota State University baseball manager Paul Blanchard in 2021. The couple experienced ectopic pregnancy, a miscarriage and a stillborn at 22 weeks in 1995. The third of the three pregnancies, Maggie Jean, is the namesake of the foundation.

Paul and Nancy Blanchard have since had two successful pregnancies, including their daughter Jessica, who is on the Maggie Jean Foundation’s board of directors, and their son Joe.

“My daughter’s [Jessica]… said, ‘I want to make sure that the women and families understand that they’re not alone.’ Because it’s private and everybody plays the blame game and what you did wrong, but it just happens,” Blanchard said to the Independent in 2023.

The Maggie Jean Foundation aims to give hope to families experiencing loss by letting them know they aren’t alone, it says on its website.

In addition to its golf fundraiser, the Maggie Jean also hosts an International Wave of Light gathering, a movement founded in 1988 by Robyn Bear to commemorate lost pregnancies and infants on Oct. 15. The Maggie Jean Foundation hosts its gathering, a candlelight vigil, at the SMSU Outdoor Classroom in the Environmental Learning Area.