Christine Fournier recaps last years Fundraising Committee’s efforts to host fun activities for our community as we came out of the pandemic restrictions.
by Christine Fournier
Our 2022 St. Mark’s Fundraising year was a much better year compared to 2020 and 2021. We were finally able to open up again and have some events as the pandemic restrictions both by the province and Diocese lifted.
The Fundraising Committee ran five fundraisers in 2022. Our fundraising year started out with our first event in May, our ‘Spring BBQ Dinner’. This event was a tasty take-out dinner featuring pulled pork or pulled chicken, two sides and a dessert for $15.00. We sold over 75 dinners for this event and raised a grand total of $671.28. This was a very successful event and we received numerous positive comments about how much those who ordered dinners enjoyed the event. We repeated this take out meal fundraiser again in November with a ‘Turkey Take Out Dinner’ fundraiser. This take out event featured fresh roasted turkey, stuffing, potatoes & vegetables, gravy & apple pie for dessert for $17.00. We sold over 100 dinners for this event and raised a grand total of just over $1300.00. This was also a very successful event and has solidified our reputation in providing delicious take out dinners and a new fundraising revenue stream for the church.
This past year we also incorporated a ‘Trivia Night’ into our mix of fundraising events. We decided to try a trivia night as it was easy to organize and we could host it safely (in case there were any Covid related changes that needed to be made quickly). We held four trivia nights throughout 2022 and a trivia and dinner evening in November and we averaged about 18 to 20 participants for each trivia night event. We received great feedback about the trivia nights and how much everyone enjoyed these evening events. We made just over $470.00 on these trivia night events for the year.
In September we organized a Community and Vendor Sale event that was hosted at St. Mark’s. This event consisted of local small business vendors as well as parishioners and community members who rented tables to sell yard sale items. We had about 7 or 8 vendors from the community and about 5 or 6 yard sale tables. Through the collection of fees for table rentals and setting up two tables to sell items from St. Mark’s, this event raised just under $600.00 for the church.
Our final fundraising event for 2022 was a very successful Quarter Auction that was held in early December. We had an amazing variety of local vendors selling their wares at this event and an amazing amount of donated items to auction off. This very successful event raised just under $2300.00 for St. Mark’s and has become known as a great evening out in the community! It will definitely be an area that the Fundraising Team looks forward to helping it grow into an even bigger and better event for 2023.
Thank you to all members of the Fundraising team for all your hard work and dedication. Without our team members we would be unable to have such amazing events that go to raise money to support our ministries and community outreach programs at St. Mark’s.