The day after Ashley Ames passed away, three of her friends gathered to decide what they would do with the Ashley Ames Fund.

The group consisted of Ames’ good friend Alice Cronenberg, her boyfriend James Onderdonk and her former roommate Sarah Calcagno, who convened as the Board of Trustees of the fund. The three decided the logical answer was to use the money — earned to cover an uninsured Ames’ medical expenses, which were nulled after her passing — to create a scholarship in honor of their friend.

Although they are still working out the details of the award, Cronenberg said the scholarship will probably be for a prospective student similar to Ames.

“It will be for students who are like Ashley: independent from their family, but don’t have a lot of income by any means and want to go to school but just can’t afford it,” Cronenberg said.

Ames was planning to go into sociology and was a photographer as well. After beginning her education at the University, she took time off to work for enough money to finish school. Cronenberg hopes the scholarship will allow someone in a similar financial situation to be able to attend school.

The more than $30,000 currently raised through the Ashley Ames Fund will go toward the scholarship after covering the costs of the funeral and cremation.

Several people said Ames brought together the community, albeit in a sad way. Indi Go Artist Co-op owner James Barham was excited that he could contribute the services of his gallery for last weekend’s ASHLEYFEST, which raised over $5,000 for the scholarship fund.

“The community just comes together like that, and that’s something I like about our community,” Barham said.

Cronenberg hopes to make an annual celebration out of ASHLEYFEST, which may be back next year in the last week of July. This year’s festival continues online, with remaining artwork available for sale at supportashleyames.com. Images of the already auctioned pieces are also available on the site.

Brent Faklis, creator of the website, worked with Cronenberg to plan the festival, and he hopes for more festivals in the future, too.

“Maybe in a month we will talk about how to keep going. It’s been so emotional and just constant hard work,” Faklis said. “I plan to sleep for about a week right after the event. I have been taking a lot of time off of work. Alice and I have put a lot of time into this.”

Everyone wants to help, including Bill Busen, a regular customer at the restaurant Ames worked at.

A few days before the funeral service, Cronenberg was trying to get a friend of Ames’ back to his native Champaign from New Mexico. Busen contributed $100 for the friend, James, who has the same name as Ames’ boyfriend.

Cronenberg said she explained to Busen it was not Ashley’s boyfriend they were trying to help, but Busen replied, “I don’t care, if he’s friends with Ashley, then he’s my friend and we want him home.”

The community got him home.

“This community has done so much, and it’s just really honestly truly amazing to see,” Cronenberg said. “I hope that people will come out and celebrate her life. She touched so many people.”

Faklis has mixed feelings about the situation because of the circumstances.

“(The experience) has been great — really driven people to help, brought us all together,” Faklis said. “I don’t think that under normal circumstances that something like this could have happened.

“I was born in this town in 1980, lived here for most of my life, and I’ve never seen people come together like this before.”