For those that don't know for the last 5 months (maybe longer) I have been helping plan our schools big charity event. 5th Grade Vs Staff Basketball Game and Charity Raffle. This has not been a small task we had to deal with A LOT of outside drama and worried this event wouldn't pan out because of it. Lucky for us we had an amazing team and were able to get a record number of donations for our raffle table, volunteers to run the event stations and community members to attend the event and support the players!
Nate and B helped me pick up and ask for a lot of donations along with the rest of our team. B was really good about getting people to understand that it is for sick kids at the hospital that we are raising money for. I think this is why we got a handful of bigger donations then we were originally told we were getting. Nate was a great trooper when it came to me burning 3 tanks of gas in the truck for pick ups, de-junking our giveaway/birthday tote and the countless phone calls and emails I had going on. He stepped up with the kids for me to go to prep meetings, basket making sessions and the countless proofreading or letters/flyers and posters.
Now about the event:
Each year we hold this event (this is year 5) and all the proceeds go to the Children's Miracle Network. We have admissions, concessions, raffle table and a 50/50. The kids decorated the halls with artwork outside their classrooms and hung CMN balloons through the halls. Outside the gym and behind the donations table they had designed their own gym shoes and hung them on paper banner. We had sponsors signs hung listing our 75+ sponsors for the night. Our concessions stand was all donated and we only had to pick up popcorn bags.
Below are some of the amazing baskets we had donated to raffle off for the night. We ended up having 46 baskets on our general raffle table and 1 basket package for our bonus raffle ticket. This was one of my new ideas to implement for this year and it turned out a success. We made up 20 bonus raffle packages (1 water bottle, 75 tickets, and a bonus ticket). We sold 15 of these and would have sold at least 3 more if we had advertised them (people didn't bring enough cash on them).
I wish I had a picture of the bonus package! It was amazing! It had a custom steel fire ring made by my grandfather's shop and designed by my uncle to match the schools dragon logo. A 31 bags camping tote, several wood burned book marks, camping key chains, a couple camping tumbler cups and a few other small items.
Below is a photo of only 1/2 the gift cards and gift certificates we received for the night. These were all added to baskets to bring their values up. in the end we had baskets ranging from $60-$350. The cheaper baskets being the kids items
Another fun thing we had this year was a coloring table. This was donated by "The Coloring Table" a company from Texas. They requested we not raffle their donation off but use it at our events. It was a HIT! The kids loved it and by the end of the night 1/2 of it was colored. A few parents said it was nice to have something to do for the little ones who didn't want to sit and watch the game or when it was too loud. They also loved the idea of how it is reusable. Below you can see B coloring while I was eating my dinner at the next table before we opened the doors for the night.
Finally a few from the night in action. Keep your eyes peeled and you can see Nate and B near the Dragon. I want to say that I am happy the event is over but I kind of miss it now. All the work was a lot of fun and I loved being able to say it was for a good cause and NOT for myself. We were truly able to pay it forward with the event by donating a little more than $2100. Next years goal is to hit $3000 and to have 300 people not including participants and volunteers.
Another thing that was on the agenda for the night was to have a local family come in from CMN. They had a little girl who just won her battle with cancer and wanted to come say thank you for all our donations and hard work but they ended up getting sick the day of the event with the flu. Next year we are hoping to have them or another family come out.
Check out that baby bump! My tee for the night almost didn't fit.
