Steven Helmer Publications

I'm still waiting on final numbers but did hear the live and silent auctions at Saturday's fundraising banquet raised more than $10,000 for our local ice rink. That doesn't include ticket sales, games, the raffle table or money we made whenever someone ordered a featured drink from the bar. Plus we had something like $1500 in cash donations prior to the event (though some of that was spent on things we needed). So, considering this was the first (and only) time I ran this event, I think it did relatively well. Now to start working on my next project for the rink...

I am in the middle of my second fundraising campaign this year. The first was for our annual ice show. Now, I am collecting donations for the Beaver Dam Family Center's annual fundraising banquet, held next weekend. This is the first year I've done anything like this and I've discovered I'm actually pretty good at it. However, as is the case with most new things, I also learned some important things along the way. First, you can't rely on mailers. I'm not saying sending out donation request letters to local businesses was a complete failure. I did manage to receive some donations. But, for this banquet, we sent out nearly 200 letters and only got about 15 donations back as a direct result of them. That's not a very good response. When I followed up with some of the businesses, I was told they didn't even look at the letters and threw them right in the recycle bin. As a result, I found follow-up is very important. In fact, when I do this again in a c...