Our crazy train does not stop! We have been focusing on our presence in the community, and getting our name out there. So far, we have largely been marketing ourselves on Instagram – we know that best way to raise funds for our community is to ensure our community knows about the work we do. We decided our Q4 goal should be raising funds to top up our gift cards. We received many grocery gift cards that we could easily use to stock up the Calgary Community Fridge, but we had to figure out how to use all the gift cards we received. We ran a Wine Survivor with our friends and family to raise funds, and partnered with so many amazing local businesses to run our first ever online auction! If you want to check out some great Calgary businesses, be sure to read our online auction post and check them out!
Our largest challenge this Quarter was finding ways to connect our community to our fundraising, while dealing with all the restrictions of Covid-19 that Calgary faced. Andrea & Brittney quickly pivoted from a small in-person event to an Auction run fully on Instagram. Amazing! So many generous local businesses donated items, and we had a great time watching their Instagram takeovers and seeing people battle it out with bids in the comments section. We also ran a Wine Survivor with our friends & family – it was an elimination game with the ability to purchase immunity for the later days. It was surprisingly hard to eliminate people each day – we felt so bad because they were so kind to support! We partnered with a sommelier for our wine selection, so the winners received an amazing selection of wines. Between these two events we raised a significant amount to top up our gift cards.
So we’ve spent time spreading our message and raising funds – but what does it mean? Well, in only our second quarter (which ended December 31, 2020) we collected 44 cards (for a total of 106 cards), and raised $3,824! This is an amazing show of support from our community, and demonstrates Calgarians desire to better the place they live! We cant wait to continue our work and spread our message out to the community.
So what do our next steps look like? We are gearing up to partner with businesses to setup work place campaigns in the Spring, and are setting up some additional drop box locations around the city! We also have an exciting project we are working on with a local Calgary charity to top up some cards they need. Stay tuned!
