Being One of San Francisco's Finest-Fundraising

As promised (and over due), this is the first part in my new blog series called Being One of San Francisco's Finest.  This series is to reaccount my experience with this Cystic Fibrosis Froundation event.

When I accepted the nomination to be one of the Foundation's Finest, I also was making a commitment to raising $3000.  I have been fundraising for Great Strides for a few years now, so I had some experience with fundraising, but it was hard to know if I could really raise that much money.  After all, when you are raising funds for a cause, I only know so many people that I can ask to make a donation.  Luckily, for the purpose of this event, raising funds could be done by traiditional donations, selling tickets, or securing action items.  Not only was I honored to be nominated for this, but I wanted to take on the challenge of raising this money for the Foundation. 

First, I had to come up with a fundraising plan.  I decided the best goal was to raise $1000 in each catagory: ticket sales, donations, and auction items.  To achieve this goal, I basically did two things: sent a letter to everyone I know accouncing the event, providing an invitation to the event and asking for a donations and I also sent letters to wineries asking for donations of bottles of wine.  I received very little response from both of these efforts. I felt a little undersupportive and started getting nervous about my ability to raise this money.   I needed a plan B.

I decided to focus on auction items, because I know most people wait until the last minute to buy tickets and make donations.  I knew that support would come in time.  But the auction items where not just going to magically show up on my door step.  I wanted to continue to focus on a wine country theme and shifted my goal from bottles of wine to more of a wine country get-a-way.  A night stay at a hotel, golfing, and dining. I started thinking of people I know working in these industries to ask for help. 

Skipping over the step-by-step details of soliciting auction items, I found a lot of support.  Donations were made by my friends in the community and they were very generous.  Here is where I ended up:

Foursight Wines- 12 bottles of wine
Londer- 12 bottles of wine
Clos du Bois- two bottles of wine and a private tour of the winery
Fritz- two bottles of wine
Fountain Grove Inn- one night stay and $100 gift certificate to the restarunt, Equis
Fountaingrove Gold Club- a round of golf for six.
Drinking Pink Stars-a San Francisco themed pillow and wine themed napkins

In all, I far exceed my goal of $1000 in auction items.  The final value of all items was calculated at $2200! Thank you to all of my auction item donors!