SEASON OF SHARING: Patricia Ostroski

Each week through December, the Longboat Observer will feature a local donor who is involved with Season of Sharing, an 11-year, community-wide fundraising partnership created by The Community Foundation of Sarasota County. To donate, visit www.cfsarasota.org.

Patricia Ostroski is spreading health and wealth. In 2008, Ostroski started teaching a weekly yoga class at Bayport Beach and Tennis Club. Instead of pocketing payments from class attendees, she began donating all the proceeds. It started as an experiment to see if she could get more people interested in yoga.

“It has been a huge success,” Ostroski says. “They are getting two for one: a charitable donation and yoga. Sometimes that motivates people.”

This is the first year she is donating the class funds to Season of Sharing. She discovered the organization after reading a newspaper article before Thanksgiving. The idea that families could fall through the cracks struck a chord with her, and she appreciated how it keeps families from becoming homeless.

“People always say, ‘It’s a good cause,’” she says. “I like to hear them say that. It’s gratifying.”

Ostroski believes some people are intimidated by yoga because they think it’s a class full of people standing on their heads. For the record, she does not do headstands. Ostroski teaches her charitable class to eight to 18 people every Wednesday afternoon using what she calls “gentle yoga.”

“I’d like to have so many people attend that I need a waiting list,” she says.

She expects to collect about $2,000 by the start of the new year.

“It’s miniscule to the amount Season of Sharing raises, but it still makes a difference,” she says.

Ostroski bought property on Longboat Key in 2004. And, although she didn’t do any philanthropic work in Philadelphia where she lived permanently while working as a tax lawyer and financial adviser, she did take her first yoga class there. And it has changed her life.

“I can’t imagine ever not doing this class for charity,” she says. “I’ll do the class as long as I can do yoga, and hopefully that will be the rest of my life.”