How I Raised $27,000 for Parkinson Disease Caregivers Support Group
by Ava
(Fort Lauderdale, FL USA)
As the Director of Support Services at a large Florida hospital, one of my duties was to establish a support group for Parkinson Disease patients. However, after successfully getting the program going, it became shockingly apparent that the person that needed the support was not the patient with the Parkinson disease, it was their caregiver. The patients was already getting everything they needed, but the poor caregiver was burdened and overloaded with duties and tasks almost beyond human endurance. These caregivers were lovingly taking care of their spouses and family members 24/7 with no relief in site.
The solution to the problem was staring me in the face. We needed a support group and respite program for the caregivers of chronically ill patients. I talked to the administrators of the hospital that was supplying the support for the Parkinson patients, pleading with them to start a similar program for the caregivers of the patient. While everyone understood the dilemma, this was a tax supported hospital and there just were not any funds for programs of this type.
I got a committee together consisting of myself and the young adult, professional children of the patients and caregivers. After making it clear to them that their parents needed more help, and help they were not able to give at the present time. Concerned about losing both parents if something was not done, a program for the caregivers was agreed upon. Many ideas were tossed around as to how to raise the money and we finally decided to have an old fashioned hoedown.
We got the hospital to donate their large meeting hall for the function. The volunteer staff offered to decorate. We turned the hall into a western themed dance hall, complete with bales of hay. We sold tickets to the dance at $25 per couple. We expected and got 95 couples, plus and additional 25 invited guest.
The ticket price covered the food, entertainment and decorations with just a small amount left for profit. We still needed a way to raise some cash for our cause. We raised the money by having a spectacular silent auction.
Letters were made explaining out cause and given to hundreds of business people in the area, asking for not money but items we could auction off. We sent out press releases to all the major TV and radio stations telling them about our plight. Luckily what we were doing was such a novel idea that we had excellent press coverage.
Our strategy was each volunteer knew at least 2 influential people. We went to them for an auction gift and a name of someone else that might be sympathetic to helping this worthy cause. It worked!
The donations started pouring in. We got large items like:
- A ride on the Goodyear blimp for 4
- Walt Disney vacation packages
- Cruise trips
- Las Vegas Vacation package
- Gourmet dinner for 10 prepared in your home by a Top Florida chef
- Restaurant certificates (dinner for 2)
- There was 200,000 frequent flyer miles
- Ski Resort tickets with lift
- Spa Packages
- Signed sports memorabilia from the Marlins and the Dolphins
A lot of smaller items which we cleverly combined into large baskets to make bigger items. Way too many items to list here. We priced any item that was valued at $100 or less at $20 starting bid. Any item valued at $1,000 or more was started at $100.
The radio and TV announced our auction and one radio station in particular would periodically tell what a particular item was currently going for. Bidding was opened by phone up until the time of the actual dance. At the dance all phone bids were stopped and the people in attendance could bid until 1 hour before closing.
When it was all over, we had raised a whopping $27,350. Not bad for my first charity auction fundraiser. This was all before Michael J. Fox came down with Parkinson's disease and the needs were not as well known. One day, I will blog how we topped this fund raiser.