Team 3- Casa Central Donation Drive & Fundraiser

Project Description:

As part of our project management course we were provided the opportunity to apply concepts we learned by carrying out a service project. Our team chose to partner with Casa Central an organization that provides a myriad of social services to those in need. We chose to organize a coat drive and fundraiser to both collect money and clothing, while increasing awareness of the organization. We partnered with Wise Owl Drinkery & Cookhouse as the venue for our event and began leveraging our networks for attendees and donations. We raffled off a variety of great prizes and reached an agreement with Wise Owl to sell drink tickets as an additional way to raise money.

Charity Description:

Casa Central transforms lives and strengthens communities, with a special focus on the LatinX community. Casa Central provides a network of social services propels a diverse population of all ages toward self-sufficiency and a higher quality of life.  Some of the programs provided include:

  • Children and Youth – early learning academy and school age program
  • Individual and Families – Violence prevention and intervention, La Posada for families who are homeless, etc.
  • Seniors – Adult Wellness and Home Care Services

Results

We set out with a goal of having 50 people attend our event, collecting 100 articles of clothing and making a profit of $500 dollars. While our monetary goal was conservative as a group we had a personal stretch goal of $2000 which we managed to exceed by collecting over $3000 dollars and making a profit of over $2,500. We ended up being successful in all 3 of our goals

Our results are below

  • Profit of $2,611 in monetary donations
  • Collected 156 items of winter coats and accessories (gloves, scarves, hats)
  • Had 55 attendees at our event.

Earnings Breakdown

Sales Price Quantity Sold Value
Raffle Tickets $5.00 172 $860.00
Raffle Bundle $20.00 59 $1,180.00
Drink Tickets $8.00 2 $16.00
Drink Bundle $20.00 35 $700.00
Monetary Donations $630.00 N/A $630.00
Total Raised $3,386.00
Costs Price Quantity Bought Value
Drink Ticket Cost $5.00 155 $775.00
Total Cost $775.00
Total Monetary Profit $2,611.00

 

Lessons Learned

This was a very educational experience with many valuable lessons we can take into our future project activities. First and foremost is to make sure your risk management plan is thorough, and you are prepared to enact your contingencies. For example, we had planned to have a speaker from our agency address the attendees, but they fell ill on the day of the event. Our contingency was to have a board member that would be attending speak instead, but they were not comfortable speaking and declined. We luckily had a second contingency and had one of our group members speak instead.  Additionally, if you plan to use any sort of logos that don’t belong to you, you need to do work on the front end. We ended up delaying the distribution of flyers and marketing materials for close to a month because we were waiting on approval to use the charity’s logo.

Advice to Future Teams

  1.  The best advice we can provide to any teams organizing a fundraiser in the future would be to maintain clear communication with your venues. Have some sort of documentation of what is discussed and agreed upon and make sure you are on the same page when trying to execute your event successfully.
  2. Have constant communication with your group and don’t procrastinate the more work you do on the front end the easier it is to execute your event.

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