Driftwood Nursery
Happy Friday everyone. It’s me again, Megan Neal, filling in for Hilary while she’s away this week. While Hilary is away for a family wedding in Hawaii, we are busy here at the office holding down the fort. It’s an exciting and busy time in my work world right now. The Spring GiveOrcas campaign is in full-blown prep mode. The deadline for nonprofits to apply for the catalog was last Friday, and we had applications filter in all the way up to the 5pm deadline (4:59pm to be exact). It was a surprising, and honestly a bit stressful, day watching the proposals line up. We expected it to be a big year, but this one was record breaking on all fronts.
We had 29 applications submitted with a total ask amount of $428k. This is about $200k more than our biggest catalog to date. WOW! As daunting as it feels to have close to a half a million dollars to raise in a two-week campaign, it also speaks volumes to the confidence our local nonprofits have in the Community Foundation, and our strong track record of continuously providing a very successful fundraising platform year after year. It also illustrates the financial status of many of our nonprofits. It seems many of them are making up for two years of lost fundraising opportunities.Time to roll up our sleeves, dig deep, and find ways to best support the organizations we all know and love.
Our Community Grants committee has begun their work of vetting the proposals. This year we have a strong committee of eleven diverse community members.We have many new members this year, ranging from a County employee, to a retired neonatal physician, to a stay-at-home mom. I am impressed with their passions and their curiosity. They will be out in the community for the next couple of weeks conducting interviews with the applicants, then we will reconvene to present their findings, and thoroughly vet all of the applications to ensure our catalog is strong, supportive, and reflective of the current needs in our community.
This year’s campaign will be a wild ride, and it’s up to our community to step up in any way they can to help raise awareness and dollars for much needed services and opportunities on Orcas as we (hopefully) shift into an endemic Covid world. GiveOrcas will open up on May 2nd and will run through the 16th. We are hopeful to round up both new supporters and the veteran donors to help bring these programs to fruition. From the committee prep work to the donor engagement, it’s truly a team effort over the course of several months.
Pride and Prejudice opened last night at the Orcas Center, so if you are craving some live entertainment, go check out the local talent. You might not want to stay out too late though- remember this Sunday our clocks spring forward, meaning we lose an hour of sleep this weekend. A sure sign that we have finally made it through yet another winter. Enjoy those long evenings next week as we move into a new season. We earned it.
Cheers,
Megan