The Anatomy of a Fundraising Event
By Daryl Goldman
We’re almost halfway to our goal of $20,000 for GGBA’s second online fundraiser, our Bird Art and Holiday Sale. I hope you will keep shopping and tell your friends about our fundraising sale. The sale has been extended to November 3rd! If you’d like to go directly to our sale, please click here. Thanks for helping raise money for GGBA programs!
I’d like to share my experience as the lead volunteer on this online event. Maybe my experience will encourage you to volunteer for any future sales that GGBA may have. Or perhaps you could propose your own fundraising event that fits your interests and talents.
For those of you who want some more excitement in life because of pandemic-related restrictions, I recommend working on a project like this. Thanks to your collective support we sold $5,700 of art on the first day of our sale! That was so very exciting. It was like seeing your first Pileated Woodpecker or being the first to spot a rare bird. Well, maybe more like going on a GGBA birding trip to Chile and being surrounded by colorful birds you have never seen.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
July and August were an especially fun part of this fundraiser because that is when I started the search for the artists and formed our working relationships. Over 90% of the artists I contacted responded right away, and with enthusiasm. It was great to get to know them and learn about their work.
During this first step of the fundraising process, I followed up on a couple of recommendations I got for artists who were featured in GGBA’s first online fundraiser, our May 2020 Bird Art Auction. I was able to get in touch with artists from the May auction who said that they would be interested in participating in future events with GGBA and who had items in a certain price range. After that, I searched the internet for more artists, using every combination of words that I could think of that had to do with “birds” and “art.” I followed trails from Instagram pages, Etsy, art festivals, and galleries. I probably spent way too much time doing this, but it was fun and a great escape from the reality of the pandemic and the escalating insanity of politics. When I wasn’t searching for art, I was writing postcards for Reclaim Our Vote, so my days felt structured and meaningful.
The hardest part of this fundraiser was creating over 90 listings on our website, using the software for our online store. I admit, getting used to the store software was so difficult that I learned to curse in 5 languages as a way to express my frustrations! I’ll take this moment to say that this sale would not have been possible without the help of Ilana DeBare, GGBA’s former Communications Manager. She trained me to use the store software, edited all my listings, and answered my panic stricken calls for help with tech issues. She did this all while she was working hard on her own big volunteer project called Auk the Vote. (If you’d like to learn more about Auk the Vote, check out a GGBA blog about the organization by clicking here).
In September, our current Communications Manager, Melissa Ramos, stepped in and started her amazing public relations program for the sale. Being a trained professional in advertising and marketing, she had ideas that I would never have thought of in a million years. She edited my blogs, created press releases, created posts for GGBA social media outreach, and highlighted the sale on the front page of our new GGBA website. She also got in touch with other organizations like Point Reyes Books and other Audubon Chapters who could help promote our sale. She made everything sound good and look excellent. She did all this while in the process of launching the newly revised GGBA website, which she rushed to finish so that our online sale pages would look better.
In spite of reminding myself how much tedious work there was to do at the end of the Bird Art Auction last May, I was once again surprised by how much work there is at this point. But hey, no pain, no gain for GGBA. Luckily this tedious work has been counteracted by the increasing sales as this fundraiser continues. Thank you again to everyone who has supported GGBA and local artists by purchasing an item during this sale.
I was going to tell you all why I picked each artist, but instead I will show you more of the artwork that convinced me to choose each artist. I think the merit of their work speaks for itself! If you haven’t checked out our sale already, I would encourage you to browse through our sale page by clicking here and delight in the gorgeous items available.
Your support has made this sale possible. Thank you again.
Now for our incredible artists…
Amy Rose Moore
Bess Petty of Bird vs Bird
Jennifer McBrien
Rigel Stuhmiller
Sylvia Gonzalez
Maggie Hurley
Nancy Overton
Casey Riley
Scott Partridge
Laura Zindel
Tex Buss
Sharol Nelson-Embry
John Beasley
Hillary Powers
Martha Chilvers
Paige Snow
I hope that you’ve enjoyed browsing through some selected works from our featured artists. If you would like to see more of their work, please click here to go to our sale.
About Daryl: Daryl is a GGBA member and the lead volunteer on the Bird Art and Holiday Sale. A retired psychologist of over 33 years, Daryl shifted her focus to creating art and birding. Daryl was also one of GGBA’s featured artists in spring’s online auction. GGBA is extremely grateful to Daryl for her hard work in helping to organize this online holiday sale.