It’s no secret that 2022 has been a challenging year for our organization, and we’ve had to make some hard decisions as to what we want to provide, and what we can feasibly provide. With the fuel prices soaring and inflation running our costs of doing business through the roof, I made some recommendations that were begrudgingly accepted and adopted by the board of directors as for our way ahead and our future financial security.
As a mostly 1- man show, living 7 miles from the nearest town (population 500) fundraising face to face isn’t terribly successful. And without a professional filling the fundraising role, which we could never afford, and refuse to do anyway, we’re unable to consistently project and raise substantial enough funds to provide a cushion/buffer for unexpected drastic changes to our supplies and consumables.
As if the supply/demand issues, fuel prices, and fundraising being a drain on our resources, trying to get creative and figure out how to raise enough money to survive at least another year drains what little energy I have left at the end of the day.
With our “reset”, we lost what few regular financial contributors we had, and by August 1st, we were officially broke. Not happy with those results, I starte crunching numbers and discovered that while the inflation rate may be hovering _~ 8%, I noted many of our expenses, such as fuel, fertilizer, parts and preventive maintenance/POLs for other machines didn’t go up 8%…….they more than doubled, or even tripled in some cases.
Anyway, with the Board’s approval, I reached out to one particular donor, who agreed to contribute his decade long annual pledge as a lump sum, if I will match 50% of that. I’m good with those terms.. unfortunately, I don’t have that lying around in cash. So,I have elected to liquidate some personal property items that have monetary value, but are of little/no value to me presently, and will depreciate as time drags on, and they sit unused.
So this gives me a few other opportunities as well, and frees up a considerable amount of time, effort, energy, and resources that fundraising drains away from you. Case in point, our 2022 raffle barely made any money when we counted the income and bounced it against our expenses and man hours dedicated to it. With other unforeseen events over the summer, our fundraiser actually ended up losing money, as the Rona decided to show up the day I was to begin the road trip delivering prizes…… instead, most got shipped, so as not to delay the winners any longer than they had already been delayed in receipt of their orize(s).
If you wouldn’t mind taking a look at the list, (I can’t even begin to post pics), and if something grabs your attention, make me a non-insulting offer, and we can negotiate from there. I’m looking to make people solid deals and get this crap out of my house and out of cardboard boxes in the attic.
Hopefully Baxter will be kind enough to link to the sale post when it’s up. First, I gotta go find a deer.
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