Holiday Giving
The holidays are a time of giving, and like other non-profits, the Red Cross hoping for holiday gifts. December is the Red Cross’s busiest month of the year. We recently opened our emergency warming shelters, which have been much needed with last weeks freezing temperatures. House fires also increase both due to cooking incidents and holiday decorating (candles, trees, etc). Basically, we’re in need of funds more than ever, and the holidays also happen to be when people/organizations donate, so we have a perfect fund-raising opportunity.
We’re doing three things to take advantage of this opportunity.
1. We launched a holiday giving campaign. I sent out PSAs to local newspaper and radio stations and we put out a press release asking people to keep us in mind for holiday donations.
2. Campaign Red is a fund-raising event that we are holding with our donors. We are having a raffle and silent auction. Now, we’re working on requesting prize donations from businesses. We sent out request letters last week, after only getting a few responses, it’s time for follow-up phone calls.
3. The Clara Barton Society (CBS) is a group of our most important donors, those who have donated at least $1,000 within the year. This month, it is more important than ever to “cultivate” donors at this level. The Maybelle-Clark Lewis Foundation offered to match the donations of any new members of the CBS. We’ve just sent out our second “reminder” mail-out this week, and hopefully will get some donations back before the end of the month.
It’s fun to be part of such a large fund-raising endeavor. As always, I hope we can gather enough donations to serve the community this winter.
