By Marty Peak Helman, Rotary Foundation Trustee and member of the Rotary Club of Boothbay Harbor, Maine, USA
During the pandemic, the Boothbay Harbor Rotary Club found a way to double the proceeds of its largest fundraiser AND use it to engage current members and attract new ones.
If that sounds like a fantasy, read on.
Our club is a traditional one that serves a small community in Maine. We’d traditionally held our biggest fundraiser – a flea market/auction – in August to take advantage both of the good weather and the summer tourist traffic. All year long, members collected gently used furniture and household items and stored them away in a barn built by the club specifically for that purpose. Then, the day before the sale, these items were sorted, hauled to the high school athletic field, priced and sold.
The scheme was both long-standing (it had been our annual summer ritual for more than 50 years) and lucrative: The flea market/auction netted over $50,000 during each of the last few years prior to the pandemic.
But in the late spring of 2020, with the lockdown in full force, it was increasingly clear that the club would not be able to pull off its annual sale. Members worried about the future of the many local charities that traditionally depended upon us for financial support. How would they survive? And speaking of survival, how would the club fare with only Zoom fellowship?
Then, a member had an idea: What if we all donned masks and turned the storage barn itself into sales space? What if we allowed a limited number of potential buyers into the barn, but made up for the small numbers by being open every weekend? What if our own club fellowship happened on Saturday mornings, in person, in addition to our Zoom meetings?
That’s how the ongoing Saturday morning barn sales came to be. We started slowly – our first financial goal was to bring in half of the traditional auction’s financial net and raise $25,000 over the course of the spring and summer. But that goal was soon met – and met again. By having an ongoing sale, we discovered, we could get better prices for the stuff we sold.
We also discovered that working the barn was a great way to socialize and have fun during the pandemic. There were jobs for everyone in the club, no matter their interest or skill set. Club members kept themselves busy:
- Picking up donations
- Sorting and categorizing donations
- Fixing things (club members cleaned, repaired, painted, and even welded to get better value from the donations)
- Pricing
- Selling
- Carrying furniture and bulky items to buyers’ cars.
Members pitched in, had fun, and – surprise! – so did our shoppers. Coming out to the Rotary barn became a community event each Saturday, and since club members were continually picking up new items for sale, there was also the thrill of the chase: If the perfect bric-a-brac wasn’t available today, it just might be on the sales floor next week.
Members had already corralled their families and neighbors to help at the barn; soon we discovered that customers wanted to help us as well. We gave volunteers Rotary T-shirts and welcomed them to the work force.
Then some of these volunteers became interested in joining the club. They’ve proven to be some of our best, most dedicated members. After all, they come in knowing exactly what the club does, what charities we support, and what expectations we have for our members. The newbies get to know our hardest-working members before they even join.
Today, sales are increasing. We’ve raised over $100,000 each year at the barn, in effect doubling the net proceeds we’d previously enjoyed from the annual auction.
In fact, we’re so successful that we’ve built two additions to the barn, and also a new parking lot that frequently fills to capacity. Our local public image has increased exponentially, and we continue to welcome new members who were introduced to us through the barn. In the Rotary year that just ended, we added 12 new members, the vast majority of whom started out as barn volunteers.
For the Boothbay Harbor Rotary Club, the pandemic brought an incredible silver lining!
Take this prospective member flyer to events in your community and distribute to members of the community so they can learn more about Rotary.
https://blog.rotary.org/2023/08/17/a-fundraiser-that-attracts-new-members/