Georgetown Rotary Online Auction
Georgetown Rotary Online Auction
In the summer of 2020, as with most charitable organizations, the Rotary Club of Georgetown faced a daunting obstacle in our fundraising efforts. For five years we had been depending on the Head for the Hills Beer Festival to raise funds to operate our local programs and support organizations that help needy people in Georgetown and in locales around the world. With the necessary cancellation of the Beer Festival, we looked to other fundraising options, and decided to try an Online Auction.
We wondered if an event that would rely on donations from local businesses would be successful. Many businesses were already struggling. Would they be able to support our event? Was it even fair to ask them?
Before committing to the auction, we surveyed a cross-section of retail and service establishments in town. We were pleasantly surprised with the warm responses we received. Despite the challenges these business owners and managers found themselves in, most shared our club’s vision to support those less fortunate, and committed to give what they could to contribute to a stronger community.
Our club members spent the summer and fall building relationships with our local business community. We collected donations of retail goods and services, as well as sponsorships to help offset our costs of running the auction, ultimately permitting us to reinvest all our proceeds back into the community. The auction went online in November, and was a great success, raising over $11,000.
Over the last few months the Rotary Club of Georgetown has used these funds to support Links2Care and the Salvation Army, two organizations that are taking care of our community’s most vulnerable. In addition, we supported a group named Sauti Moja, who provides for orphans in Kenya. Finally, we initiated a program we called “The Year of Giving”, in which each member of our club (there are about 20 of us) is asked to choose a charity to give $100 to.
The motto of Rotary International is “Service Above Self.” We at the Rotary Club of Georgetown have been personally touched by the generosity of our community, by the desire to give, even in lean times, to help others who have even greater needs. Having the opportunity to tap into this collective commitment to serve others before oneself is what being a Rotarian is all about.