Wayland Patch 1/9/12: Wayland Steps Up to Replenish Community Fund. In November, with the heating season just around the corner, the Wayland Community Fund saw its coffers rapidly emptying. The fund began in 1997 as a means "to provide short-term, emergency financial assistance to Wayland residents," according to the website. When Patch talked with Wayland Community Fund Director Mike Patterson in November, he said that in all his years of directing the fund, he'd seen it grow depleted before, but never at "quite this accelerated” a pace. The fund was declining so quickly, in fact, that Patterson took the unprecedented step of mailing requests for donations to 5,200 households. Wayland residents responded in a big way.