I obviously didn't want a bad stigma attached to the fundraiser, but I felt like it was a big misunderstanding. The people driving up the bid understood the point of the fundraiser, which was to raise money for camp, regardless of what you were getting in return. But it's hard to continue with what worked when you get feedback such as that. So, we decided to try something different.
We planned an Italian night, and served a spaghetti dinner. We charged $5 per person, or $20 for a family of 4 or more. The girls served the food, which included spaghetti, garlic bread, and salad. We made the centerpieces out of jam jars that I've been collecting for years (and which we've used for SO many events in YW), wrapped them with burlap, tied them with string, and filled them with dry spaghetti noddles. Thanks, Pinterest :) I ordered a bunch of paper lanterns and a roll of red gingham table covering.
We also decided to make and sell frozen cookie dough balls because I was concerned about the lack of money we were going to make on the dinner. I determined that we needed to make 50 dozen cookie dough balls, and I set to work on picking recipes and figuring out quantities for the massive amount of cookie dough we were going to make. I had my long list, then set to shopping with my kids. My kids were seriously patient as I stood in the aisles and figured out how many tablespoons were in a cup, etc, to determine how much of a certain ingredient to buy. Such a lot of work!! I decided to do it all myself because it didn't make sense for everyone to go to the store for one or two ingredients, but it was a lot to take on! Especially because I realized the next day that I bought enough ingredients for 50 BATCHES of cookies, rather than 50 dozen. So, we then had enough for roughly 150 dozen cookies.
This fundraiser just kept getting better, haha. I decided to stick to one recipe (my favorite chocolate chip cookies) to keep things simple. I figured I could return a lot of the ingredients, and buy out what I couldn't return. In one mutual activity (an hour and a half), we were able to crank out 70 dozen cookies. I was pretty impressed with those girls! We had them all bagged, and they went straight to my chest freezer when I got home.
I had delegated the spaghetti sauces because I was buying all the other dinner ingredients, but I'm grateful that at the last minute I took one of my advisors up on her offer to cook half of the pasta. If not, I would have been completely screwed. It took me almost 2.5 hours to cook half of that pasta, and I never would have been to the church on time if my advisor hadn't cooked the rest. We planned on 125 people for dinner, which is about the turnout we've had in the past. We had 25 packs of pasta to cook, 6 crockpots of sauce, 15 loaves of bread, 20 bags of salad, and lots of tomatoes, cucumbers, and butter for the garlic bread.
Sadly, the dinner turnout was scarce. Like, 50 people scarce. I wanted to cry. I was so grateful for the families that attended and showed their support, but we had spent so much money to host the event and I knew we weren't getting our money in return.
We had Italian music playing during dinner, then a few girls shared their amazing talents of singing and playing the piano. At one point, I went to go move the piano to where the girl wanted it, and Kevin later told me that his heart went out to me as I tried to do that on my own. I just started crying and was embarrassed that I looked so stupid. He assured me that I didn't look stupid, but since he knew the backstory of how many hours I had spent putting the event together, he just felt bad that I was singlehandedly doing so much. I definitely could have delegated more, but there were many reasons that I just thought it would be simpler if I took care of it myself. But it really was too much. And the YW were not as invested in the evening because they weren't making desserts, which then made me feel like their families weren't as invested in the process either. Several girls texted me a few hours before the fundraiser to tell me that they forgot about "prior commitments". I was just frustrated because all of this was FOR THEM, but it felt unappreciated.
Then comes the subject of money! By the end of the night, we made $220 on the dinner portion, and had sold half of the cookie dough. We had tons of food left over, and I even announced that if people wanted to buy a bag of salad for $2, that would help a lot because we still had 13 bags of salad left!!
When I added up my receipts at the end of the night, we made a whopping $721. Such a disappointment, especially after all the hours of preparation it took. Although the whole thing was very disheartening, at least it was the year of "ward camp" because it is far less expensive than Stake camp. At least we can say that we tried another method, but we have learned what does, and doesn't work. I'm not saying we have to go back to the way we did it before, but we need to do some sort of hybrid approach that involves the girls more, is simpler, and makes more money!
Despite all my grumbling, I really do love these girls! Even the ones who couldn't attend due to school things, or "prior commitments."
And in better news, several people later contacted me and made financial contributions, which was so helpful!! I was able to sell the rest of the cookie dough, which was also a big relief. That involved me running it to people's houses, or bringing it to church on multiple occasions in my cooler. Oh, and all the bags of cookie dough that were in the bottom of the freezer were completely squished from the weight of all the bags on top, so they looked like cookie dough pancakes. I felt guilty charging $15 a bag for a dozen cookie dough balls that were actually a pancake, so I thawed the last 20 bags in my fridge to then reshape the dough into balls. So much fun :(
Next year can only be better!!
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