I've been soooo busy. With the days getting shorter and the nights chillier, the garden and orchard are crying out for attention. Even though I didn't get to harvest some things I usually do, I am getting plenty of others (isn't that the way it always is?). At least we've been lucky to have some nice mellow weather, so I'm not to the panic stage of harvesting yet.
But my Soroptimist Club has been keeping me hopping. Money in this economy is getting tighter and tighter, and the need keeps growing, so service organizations like mine have to work even harder to raise funds. We're lucky to have a couple of endowments we've invested, but with interest rates so low we're now starting to use up the principle. We've got our big golf tournament to raise funds for mammograms next weekend, but sign-up numbers are down from what they've been in the past so we're trying to keep coming up with new ideas (and of course, every other non-profit and service organization in the area is in the same straits).
So we threw together another rummage sale, held today. There are lots of businesses going under right now, and lots of empty storefronts in town. We managed to get the use of an empty store donated to us for the past month. We're a tax-exempt organization so the owners get a tax write-off by letting us use what would have been empty anyway, and we had a nice place to gather, organize, price items, and hold our sale. I have a steady hand with a paintbrush and good spatial awareness, so I dug out my old tempera paints and a little ladder, and spent an afternoon painting a window sign (and got quite a step-workout in the process). With the advent of computer graphics, no one does painting by hand any more, so someone hand-lettering is always a good attention-getter. One of the guys from the sign shop next shop down even volunteered to wash the window for me afterwards. We made some money, and will be donating items that didn't sell to other charities. I'm just so glad it's over.
But my Soroptimist Club has been keeping me hopping. Money in this economy is getting tighter and tighter, and the need keeps growing, so service organizations like mine have to work even harder to raise funds. We're lucky to have a couple of endowments we've invested, but with interest rates so low we're now starting to use up the principle. We've got our big golf tournament to raise funds for mammograms next weekend, but sign-up numbers are down from what they've been in the past so we're trying to keep coming up with new ideas (and of course, every other non-profit and service organization in the area is in the same straits).
So we threw together another rummage sale, held today. There are lots of businesses going under right now, and lots of empty storefronts in town. We managed to get the use of an empty store donated to us for the past month. We're a tax-exempt organization so the owners get a tax write-off by letting us use what would have been empty anyway, and we had a nice place to gather, organize, price items, and hold our sale. I have a steady hand with a paintbrush and good spatial awareness, so I dug out my old tempera paints and a little ladder, and spent an afternoon painting a window sign (and got quite a step-workout in the process). With the advent of computer graphics, no one does painting by hand any more, so someone hand-lettering is always a good attention-getter. One of the guys from the sign shop next shop down even volunteered to wash the window for me afterwards. We made some money, and will be donating items that didn't sell to other charities. I'm just so glad it's over.
1 comment:
It's nice to see where the money goes... sure gives a sense of accomplishment, I'll bet.
Kudos :-)
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