Internet Café Fundraising

This weekend, I was invited by a good friend to an online fundraiser at an Internet Café to help raise money for various local charities. When I walked in, they had a least 20 computers hooked up, a local band playing some really cool jazz, coffee samplings and lots and lots of hors d’oeuvres. In particular, I must say the lobster mac & cheese was out of this world. I always thought that was such a weird pairing of food and that lobster is too expensive and decadent to be mixed with cheap mac & cheese, but that’s neither here nor there…

The event started out with the charity spokespeople giving their 5 minute spiel about their cause and mission. Then we were directed to their specific charity fundraising campaign online to learn a bit more about it. Fund raising online is super easy to do and even more fun when you have the option to create your own personal fundraising page. The event organizer taught us how to do this so we could create our own page featuring the various local charities to not only donate on our own, but share with family and friends to raise awareness for the causes and hopefully bring in more donations. It was fun to be in the same room as others who are involved with internet fundraising and passionate about it.

After we were done with the online portion of the event, more and more people dropped into the café to see the band. It got pretty crowded in there, so my friends and I left to go see a movie. Overall, great event and great idea to get people together at an Internet café to spread the word about raising money online. And if you’re ever in town, I would suggest you stop by to sample the lobster mac.

Breaking the monotony of the after-work gathering…with event fundraisers.

Yesterday, I decided to go out with my coworkers after work. Usually, we hit up the local bar and vent about the day’s happenings. The typical conversation includes: “{Insert Name} is not doing his/her job, all they ever do is complain” or “I can’t wait until Friday” or “When in the h*# am I going to get a raise?!” Boy - am I sick of that. This time we actually did something good for a change and decided to be a little bit more proactive and actually donate to a charity. The charity we donated to started out as an online fundraiser (which is how we originally found out about it) and then evolved to more of a volunteer program where you donate your homecoming or prom dresses and accessories to girls who might not be able to afford them. Great idea, huh? So we all met up at a local church where the charity fundraising campaign was being held. I come from a family of 3 sisters, so I was super excited to be able to give 7 dresses to the girls that would be there. They also had some event fundraising at the church, so luckily if some girls didn’t have any dresses to donate, they could donate money to the cause. The volunteers working at the church also let us know that were working on getting their web page updated so that they could do more fundraising online. Hopefully that will get them more money and volunteers so that they can market the cause and put on an even bigger event next year.

The event was awesome. All of the high school girls that came were so incredibly excited and grateful for the dresses and to also have their very own personal shoppers helping them for the big day. I heard stories about their boyfriends or guys that they really liked and were hoping would ask them to the dance, that it brought back good (and sometimes really bad) memories of my high school days.

I encourage anyone to participate in this type of event if you have one in your area. Some really easy and fun ways to help even if you can’t volunteer at the actual event is to create an online fundraising pages through a site such as Crowdrise. It’s a great way to raise money online and create your own personal fundraising pages.

So, the night went great and of course, we ended up stopping by a bar afterwards to you guessed it…talk about the work day. I guess you could say we tried not to.