Fundraising

The one thing I love about the town I live in is the generosity of the people. When someone needs something, there are others there to meet it. Our local schools hold a competition to see who can gather the most food/cash to donate to local food banks. It’s a week long effort. Every night features a different event, plus the daily trudging through the rain to garner donations house to house. I did the math one year and the amount collected is about equal to 55 pounds of food for every single resident in the town. This is not your local can drive.

For my part, I’m the advisor for the dessert auction. Students ask for donations  and get their parents to make various goodies which we auction off. We do a silent and live auction. Every year I do a little freak out the week of… I’m positive that there will not be enough items to be auctioned off, that there will not be enough food and it will fail miserably. Thus my activity for today. These are three baskets for the silent auction. Two are Thanksgiving table decor – centerpiece, napkins and napkin rings. Granted there are only four napkins and rings… but really, I am a living on a teacher’s salary here. the Snowman one a large holiday popcorn bowl, filled with microwave popcorn, hot chocolate mix, mugs and a Holiday movie. Altogether, they cost about $26 to make, plus $2 for the cellophane to wrap them. Hopefully, they’ll bring in at least that.

   The wreath is still a work in progress. The woodshop teacher is creating some wooden cut outs of our mascot for me to add on – I’m hoping that she will be able to do one large one to hang on the middle. I also found some jingle bells in our school colors to add to it, as well.  The principal has already said that she will send a proxy bidder in to purchase it for her office… so I’m hoping that she’s willing to pay big bucks for it!

Usually, we have one community member who shows up with some big checks to purchase stuff. I think one year she walked out with about half of the donated items because she just bids big on everything! I’m really hoping that she shows up again this year… because last year I came home with a toilet. Now, I didn’t really want to come home with a toilet, but I was the only one to bid – just to get it started – and paid a whopping $25 for a brand new kholer toilet. Yah, I gave it away to a cousin who is building a house. It was that or have it moved to my classroom… start the jokes about the education system now.