To raise money in our last project, we hosted a "camp", we held a raffle, and we sold homemade soaps. The camp we hosted was an after school, Valentine's Day themed "camp" for kids in grades two to four. We played games outside, made Valentines and crafts for relatives and friends, and we finished with a very messy cookie decorating session. It was such a fun time getting to know and interact with the kids and it felt good putting smiles on every one's face. Though this was our first themed "camp", it was not our first "camp". In fact, we've hosted one in every fundraising effort since last June. It's been interesting to see how we've learned to entertain the kids while still having fun ourselves in unique ways. We really enjoy hosting them because it gives us a chance to teach younger kids about philanthropy in hopes that they will keep a spirit of giving with them throughout their whole life.
In addition to hosting a Valentine's day"camp", we also held a Dream Big! raffle. The raffle was a new idea that we thought up when brainstorming new ways to raise money. We were a little bit concerned about the amount of money we would make off of this compared to the amount of money it would take to make it possible, but it ended up to be more than we expected. We originally wanted to raffle off a gardening basket, a lady's luxury basket, and a Concord gift card basket. But as the project went on, we were given a hair salon giftcard for $80 and a free massage which were also raffled off separately Selling tickets was a bit of a struggle at first, but we ended up selling around $500 worth of them (including donations). We were glad that this new form of fundraising was successful so that we may be able to use it again in future projects.
As mentioned before, we also sold homemade soaps to raise money for Dream Big!. It started when we wanted to get more of our friends from school involved in the Giving Gals' work as they started to show more interest. An afternoon was held where we spent the whole time making soaps of all different shapes, sizes, scents, and colors. We sold the soaps by size and ended up raising around $215 worth of soap. It wasn't as successful as we had hoped but we have now learned that selling soap may not be the best form of fundraising.
We ended up raising a total of $1,400 for Dream Big! thanks to all those who contributed to our "camp", raffle, and soap selling. Currently, we're working on a mission statement and due to busy schedules, will be taking a small absence of fundraising and instead, will be working more on volunteer work. We hope that you stay tuned as we try to make more of an effort to post more often about our hands on volunteer work.
