A Very Different, But Successful Faire

 Because of the virtual nature of this past year’s Global Holiday Faire, we will never know how well we did raising money for the twelve organizations that we promoted through our virtual marketplace. But we do have some numbers and we do know that we had a positive impact on all of those non-profit organizations, and in one case, more of an impact than ever before!
 

Here is what we know - we raised over $1,500 for SERRV through our group sale. Undoubtedly, we raised more than that on the website. We did a group sale for Women’s Bean Project which raised over $440 and we know for sure that shoppers used our exclusive coupon code online, so those sales were even higher. We donated gift baskets to Loma Vista Farm to sell during their Christmas Tree sale which raised $127. That was a small way for us to contribute to their cause and money that they wouldn’t have had without the baskets from our church and the Faire’s ecumenical committee. We know that we raised over $660 for Concern America. That is a great number for online sales! With the incredible amount of donations that we received (over $1,000!) and with some other funds, we were able to donate $550 to the DePaul Women’s Center, and $600 to both Genesis House and the Amador St. Hope Center, all of which are long time partners of the Faire.
 

We are still hoping to get some more reports from a few of our vendors. We know that we sold over $300 for Global Mamas, but we may have raised quite a bit more. We know anecdotally that we had shoppers make purchases through the Franciscan Peace Makers, but we have no idea how much. Again, anecdotally we know that we raised money for Arbor Day Foundation from their alternative giving program, but have no idea how much. We promoted Milestones of Development and hope that shoppers visited their site and made some donations, but we will never know. We certainly know that we had a lot of visitors to our website and we know that we did a great job of spreading the word about all of these organizations.
 

I did skip one of the organizations as I wanted to give it its own space. We set up a special fundraising page for Heifer International and we set a goal of $1,500 as that is the average we’ve raised for them over the last 10 Global Holiday Faires. To say that we blew past that number would be an understatement. We raised $3,932 on that fundraising page! Plus, we received other donations directly to the Faire which were intended for Heifer, which brought our grand total raised to $4,282! We were blown away by that response. That is by far the most we’ve ever raised for Heifer in over 20 years of supporting them from the very first Faire. Last year had been the best ever, but we raised $1,887 more than that previous record. So a big thank you goes out to everyone who donated to this great effort!
And thank you to everyone who placed an order for SERRV and Women’s Bean Project for our special orders, to everyone who made a purchase or a donation to one of our vendors, to everyone who donated directly to the Faire, to everyone who made a gift basket, to everyone who helped promote our Virtual Marketplace and make this Faire as successful as it was in such difficult situations.

Don’t forget, we will be back. Mark your calendars now for December 4, 2021. We look forward to seeing you (hopefully in person) then!