One by one, Simone Conner saw her fundraising events disappear.
Rope For Hope, where white-knuckled participants rappel down Victoria’s 13-storey CIBC building, gone. The fashion-related evening that was supposed to be at Moxie’s on Thursday, cancelled.
Ditto for a golf tournament at Olympic View, a fun run in Nanaimo and the year’s biggest money-maker, UnWined, a swishy food-and-drink affair at the University Club.
What really hurt wasn’t the loss of the events, but the loss of the revenue that allows Make-A-Wish to send sick children to Disneyland, or to meet their favourite celebrity, or whatever. Conner herself got involved with the charity — she’s its Vancouver Island director — after her own ailing son was flown to Washington, D.C., to meet his hockey hero, Alex Ovechkin.
Such moments of sunshine mean a lot to children struggling in the dark. Think it sucks being a kid during the pandemic? “Now add on a life-altering medical condition,” Conner says. So, yes, she felt pressure to stop the charity’s revenue stream from drying up completely.
What Conner came up with was UnWined Outside, a summer-long campaign that will launch June 20. Instead of going to the University Club, people who visit a score of food-and-drink sponsors will be eligible for a draw with fabulous prizes. The sponsors themselves will raise funds — Cakes Etc. plans to sell a cookie, Sheringham Distillery will have a tip jar, that sort of thing. There’ll be an online 50-50 draw.
Will it raise as much money as usual? No way. But it will raise some, which, in the year of COVID-19, is as much as the non-profit sector can expect.
Charities are getting hammered. The walks, runs, bike rides, golf tournaments and galas that usually fill the calendar are gone. In May, Imagine Canada, an umbrella group for non-profits, said 69% of the country’s charities had seen their income fall. They have laid off more than 80,000 employees.
Longtime events are having to change course. The Times Colonist Book Sale probably won’t happen, though the TC is trying to come up with an alternative that will keep some money flowing to literacy-grant recipients.
Likewise, the Cops for Cancer won’t have a new team cycling the length of Vancouver Island this autumn, but will keep the Tour de Rock alive by having small groups of former riders dig out their old spandex (yikes!) and cover the distance as a relay. “Cancer doesn’t take a break when a global pandemic hits, so neither will we,” says the Canadian Cancer Society’s Tiffany McFadyen. Maybe the Tour won’t raise $1.2 million as in previous years, but she still thinks Vancouver Island will step up.
With imagination, technological wizardry and dedicated sponsors and supporters, some non-profits have made alternatives work. Last week, in place of its annual golf tournament, the foundation that supports the Veterans Memorial Lodge at Broadmead held a Stay ’n’ Play event in which all the components — 50-50, diamond ring raffle, silent auction, gift-card draw — were online. The virtual event brought in more than $102,000, which was $21,000 more than expected.
Occasionally, blessings come when least expected. When Victoria residents Joanna Witham and Katharine McCallion, with the design help of friend Mitch Hawes, took it upon themselves to print T-shirts with an echoes-of-Obama image of our provincial health officer on the front and the words “Dr. Bonnie F***ing Henry” on the back, sales earned $20,000 for Esquimalt’s Rainbow Kitchen.
“That’s an entire month of operations for the Rainbow Kitchen in normal times,” says the non-profit’s director, Patrick Johnstone. Good thing, because more and more hungry people are showing up for the kitchen’s daily lunch.
Witham and McCallion’s fundraiser has ended, but the Rainbow Kitchen itself now plans to print some T-shirts, albeit with the wording on the back changed to a more G-rated “Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe.” (BTW, some of the original shirts were snapped up by Health Ministry staff, who wear them proudly.)
The T-shirt idea was like catching lightning in a bottle, which is great, though the obvious catch is that there are a lot more charities needing a bolt from the blue. They all fill needs that don’t go away just because of the pandemic.
