Inwood Woman's Nonprofit Helped By Husband's Viral Love Story

UPPER MANHATTAN, NY — When a photographer from the immensely popular Humans of New York page stopped to interview Marc Raco, he seized the opportunity to talk about his wife.

"She’s the first one to donate to somebody’s fundraiser," Raco said to the photographer with more than 28 million followers on Facebook and Instagram. "She’s the first one to promote somebody else’s thing on social media. Every holiday season she bakes cookies and brings them to the post office, just so the workers know that somebody cares."

As he continued talking about Heather Edwards, his wife of two years and an Inwood resident, he brought the conversation to her recent struggle in running her nonprofit AhHa!Broadway.

Edwards had recently launched a fundraiser to help her nonprofit — which hosts theater camps, makeup workshops and even a radio hour for kids — but the drive wasn't getting anywhere near her $60,000 goal.

She started to auction off her own artwork as a result.

"This is the most important thing I’ve ever seen be important to her, and I really want her to succeed," Raco said in his Humans of New York interview. "Because I love her. But also because I never want her to lose faith in the goodness of the world. There’s only so much a person can give without getting back, until they say: ‘Why am I still doing this?’"

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Humans of New York is a mammoth in the social media world, with over 11 million followers on Instagram and more than 17 million followers on Facebook. The account photographs and interviews New Yorkers on the street in an effort to make a never-ending catalog of stories.

Its number of followers made an immediate impact on Edwards' life.

Before the post went up on Tuesday, the fundraiser had 45 donors raise $3,300 of its $60,000 goal.

In the three days since, it has reached 1,829 donors with a total of $60,553 raised.

Many other of the AhHa!Broadway's initiatives highlighted on the page's LinkTree have also since received thousands of dollars in donations as well as a massive jump in social media foot traffic.

The nonprofit's social followers went from 1,300 across Facebook and Instagram to 11,100.

You can check out AhHa!Broadway's work on its LinkTree.