Decorating, Cooking, & Hosting, Oh My!

Abby and I have decided to co-host a jewelry party fundraiser for 31 Bits, and we're quite excited about it. There's a huge chance it'll be the two of us a a little more than a handful of the ton of people we're inviting, but I'm honestly just excited to cook some new appetizers and desserts, and decorate Abby's place all vintage-y. We were inspired by this blog.

This past Saturday we woke up earlier than you should on a day off, and did some garage sale hunting. We found some cool vases, and THIS beauty:

That shiny, beautiful red lantern was only $0.50! The camera belonged to my grandfather, and my mom has loaned it to us, along with these:

See that ruler? That's what back in the 1950's was called political propaganda! Pretty cool, huh?

And these beauties...I found them when Jeff and I were in Old Town Orange looking for the door handles for the jewelry thingamabobber project (which, if it turns out good and vintagy enough, we might also use to hang some cool jewelry on at the party). I kept joking that I wanted to find a "$5 deal" which was ridiculous: prices at these antique stores are, well, ri-di-cu-lous. Then I found these containers...and I was expecting prices of about $25 for each of them, which would be in line with everything else...

But no! They were $7 and $9! Even the guy who rang me up was shocked by the price...it almost seemed like he was debating on whether he should sell them to be for that price or try to come up with some excuse to hold on to them. But alas, I got them, and got as close to a five dollar deal as I was gonna get. But I'm really, really happy with my find/purchase.

I'll save the menu for another post :)

Further Adventures in Advertising

Rain. Constant rain.

As I mentioned before, Abby and I are doing our own fundraising for our trip, and the first idea that popped into my head was to do a garage sale, with donations of stuff provided by friends and family. The response was overwhelming. I underestimated how happy people are to have someone come to their home to pick up junk they have already had sitting in a corner of their home for months!

Abby and I prepared by advertising in three different online sources (Craigslist, Pennysaver, Recycler). I didn't feel comfortable listing the full address of the location we were having it at (which was generously provided by my in-laws, thank you again so much!), so I just listed the major cross streets and told prospective customers to look for our signs. We also had a dear friend design an amazing flier which we sent to friends and family, and spread across facebook as much as we possibly could. It's hard to tell if any of that worked, however. I really think most of our customers were just random people looking for garage sales that saw our signs. We did have one customer who came specifically for our event and simply donated $10 without buying anything, which was fantastic! But I didn't ask her how she found out about it, so I guess we'll never know what did it.

But there was Rain.

A few days before the event we noticed the weather forecast. Abby and I were vigilant about that forecast. We saw it slowly climb from 10%....to 30%....to 80% chance of rain. We were honestly so disheartened that all our hard work promoting, and picking up stuff from all over the place was going to be in vain.

Thankfully a friend came through at the last minute and let us borrow her tent, under which we stuffed as much stuff as we could. It wasn't the best organized, by far, but it worked. Although it did rain, and it was constant throughout the day, thankfully people still came and went and haggled (oh they haggled) and paid. We tried to combine it with a bake sale, which was successful to a lesser extent. I think the prime hours for the bake sale would probably be between 6-8am, and unfortunately we didn't get that going until after 8am. I think we'll try just hot chocolate and coffee this Saturday, starting right at 6am. In the end we made $685, which is more than enough for at least one flight to Haiti!

One thing we thought might work to our advantage was to show the work we'd be doing when we go back, so people know what their money is going towards. I did a picture timeline of a volunteer's day with All Hands, hopefully depicting everything accurately for our customers. Unfortunately, and it should've been expected, most people didn't really care, as long as they could save a buck. When people tried to haggle down prices, I told them the purpose of the garage sale in an effort to keep my original price, and all I got was a blank stare, haha. Oh well.

One of the things I kept observing throughout the day, other than the constant rain, was that as much as we sold, there was still SO. MUCH. STUFF. Honestly, anyone driving by around 2pm and seeing everything that was still strewn about would have thought we hadn't sold a single item. What I kept thinking: we have to move this stuff all over again. Sigh.

Fortunately we had a small army of friends and family that helped us pack and move everything. Abby and I are going to go through all the leftover stuff as well as the new donations this week to try to make the next garage sale a little more organized. Yep, there's enough for another one! Hopefully we'll make up the rest that's needed for the second flight.

In summary, I think if you're looking to raise money for something, and willing to put in the time and labor, a garage sale seems to be a good way to go. Advertise as much as you can, but I think the most important thing is to have visible signs at all major intersections, that's the only sure thing. I also reached out to not only friends and family, but also professional contacts, and was lucky enough to get a good response. Don't leave any stone unturned :) And make sure you have a small army of people to help you!

All in all, I think it was a very successful first fundraiser. Now we just have to come up with more ideas on how to make the rest of the money we need. Suggestions?

Adventures in Fundraising

In my pursuit of making myself more marketable to the non profits I someday hope to work for (and get paid to work for), I realized a few months ago that experience in fund raising and grant writing is always a plus. At first I wanted to take a course for each of these subjects, but the expenses involved with that just haven't been in the cards lately. So instead, I'm diving head first and trying to figure it out on my own, with the help of those willing to help.

Aside from our garage sales for our personal expenses to

Haiti (which I'll blog about later), my main adventure is trying to raise some serious money for All Hands, specifically their sanitation project. I've been working on a presentation since July, updating information and what not, and I think I'm almost where I want. I'm planning on presenting it to attorneys and law school professors in the area, so it needs to be legit. I'm trying to make it detailed without being overwhelming, informative, and even with citations!

At first I was thinking of contacting large law firms and trying to make presentations to them, but after talking to a more experienced attorney, we came to the conclusion that wouldn't be a very effective use of time. He helped me realize that the better r

oute to go is to just have a fundraising social event, where I can charge per person. My thought is: charge $40-50 per person, and after giving my presentation, ask people or their firms to pledge larger donations. The latter part scares me a little, since I'm afraid I'm going to put all this effort into this event, and no one will care enough to take it a step further, haha. Hopefully people will prove me wrong.

My two biggest concerns have been: 1) finding a place to have the event, with little or no charge, and 2) finding someone to cover the cost of the fundraiser. I've learned lately that both of these just require the right connections. For the first one, I met a dual attorney couple at a legal fundraising event, and was smart enough to keep in touch with them by sending them a thank you follow up email.

I asked the wife for some fundraising

tips and advice, and told her about my concerns regarding locations and cost. She gave me some tips on catering and what not, and a couple weeks later sent me a follow up email offering her house as a venue for the fundraiser. I can't tell you how excited I was when I read that email. So, just like that, concern number one evaporated!

I'm still working on securing funding, but the Thanksgiving holidays have set me behind a bit. I will be sending out some donation request letters in the next couple weeks. I was originally hoping to have this event in January, but I'm thinking it might have to be pushed back to February unless I can secure the funding ASAP (which with the holidays coming up, seems doubtful).

Everything after that, catering, decor, rentals, etc., just falls into place. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'm going about this the right way, and that I can actually raise some good funds for this project. Not only will it help an amazing organization, it helps me feel like regardless of how far I am, physically, I'm still helping out in some way, not to mention the experience that it gives me.

Photo courtesy of Ben Waldman