The Wonderful World of Non-Profits

Whew. It's been a long day...and week. We just finished our big fundraiser tonight - A Show of Support - that included a silent auction, live auction and raffles. Sooooo much work. No wonder my supervisor is a fan of writing grants. Fundraisers are too much work...but fun. This fundraiser was a joint effort between my agency and another smallish agency in the area. So I got to meet a lot of other cool people who are also interested in issues of poverty and homelessness. This other organisation - A Wider Circle - does wellness classes with low-income people and people living in shelters. They have also done a lot of work helping settle Katrina families - 75 families in total which is incredible for a very small agency. Tonight at the fundraiser they had a couple of their Katrina people speak. The one woman actually gave birth to her daughter during the hurricane. She couldn't make it to the hospital and they couldn't get a doctor so her husband had to deliver the baby (the baby's name is Kia Miracle!). Her story was pretty unbelievable. Not being allowed to take food and supplies from stores, having to wade through deep deep water, past dead bodies. Apparently her best friend & her friend's 9 children all died. I still can't comprehend how this disaster was so horrendously handled, particularly because it happened in such a wealthy country. It's really shameful. I heard another story of a man who's mother was in a nursing home in one of the affected areas. He had contact with her for a bit and was trying to find help for her. Nothing was done. She ended up dying and pinned to her body was a note that read "we're still waiting for water." We haven't had too many Katrina families/people coming to us yet but it is likely that we will in the near future. Quite a few families were brought to/settled in the DC area. Right now the Red Cross is still providing for most of them but that assistance is limited in time. It is likely that we will soon be seeing them in our shelters and such. It will be interesting, especially since there are already so many people already in need. Anyways, the title of this post is in reference to crazy fundraising projects. Necessary to continue providing services but an insane amount of work. But, tonight was a pretty big success. I think some big money came in, which isn't surprising in this county - there's a lot of money here. A big change from the prairies ;) But, it is really late and I've been working hard all day. So I'm going to call it a day and crash.
Me and Joan (the outreach social worker) at the fundraiser.