Contra Fundraiser

I have to say, I have never really been a fan of fundraisers. Do you actually make enough of a profit from them to justify the work gone into doing it?? (Me being cynical). So when Serge told not to do one till I was "desperate", I was relieved. Presuming I'd get all support raised really fast, and there'd be no reason to do a fundraiser. Right. That didn't happen and Serge told me it was time to do a fundraiser. Well.... I'm not really sure how the idea came about, (if it was my idea or someones else's), I just ran with it! I decided to do a Contra Dancing fundraiser. I've contra danced for almost 10 years and even organized a dance for my church youth group, (so I guess I felt like this was something I could do, that was actually within my comfort zone!) The youth group at my church had talked about doing another contra dance, since it'd been such a big hit. I decided to ask if we couldn't kill two birds with one stone, and asked the youth leaders if the youth group would host a "let's help Jes get to Ireland dance!", opened to the whole church, (child care provided), they surprisingly loved the idea!

As I stated so bluntly at the beginning of this, I wasn't a fan of fundraisers. I've been invited to swing dance fundraisers in the past. For people I don't know. And I'm always like... "I don't know you, I don't really like swing dancing (i.e. don't know how) and it's for some third world country...." and never gone. So I was very surprised and humbled by how many people came to this dance that I didn't know. It was such an encouraging time to see how many people came, excited about sending me to Ireland!!

Looking back over the past couple of months of support raising, there are some things I would have done differently. (Actually, I think I would have done just about everything differently). One of them being, I would have done a fundraiser back in January or March, just to let more people know sooner, and get them excited about what I'm doing. Serge, discouraged it because I really need monthly support, and fundraisers are really only good the one time support. Agreed. But, they let that many more people know. So like I said, I would have done one earlier in the support raising journey and then done another one closer to the deadline. All this to say, thank you to everyone that came, it seriously meant the world to me!! And if I ever get invited to another swing dance fundraiser, I'm most definitely going!