DATES TO REMEMBER:
Decorations work party to be determined. Look for news on the 411, and Sunday Bulletin. Please bring scissors and a sack lunch or snack. Sign up on the rolling FOTH bulletin board on Sundays. Let Leslie Firth know if you are crafty and can do some projects at home.
August 15 to September 5th - Sign up at the FOTH bulletin board on Sundays.
September 5th – Early Bird $40 pricing ends. Price goes to $50 per person on the 6th. The price is $60 at the door. If this is a hardship, we can arrange for a confidential complimentary ticket. We don’t want anyone to feel that they cannot afford to attend. Please speak to Leslie Firth or Sally Potts about this.
September 5th – Childcare registration ends today. Have you filled out a form that came with your invitation, and have you contacted the Childcare manager?
April 29 - Last day to sign up donation items and bring them in to the Grace House Library. The committee needs time to prepare the bid sheets. Please help us keep our sanity by bringing them in on the 29th or sooner. Contact Joann Oliver, joannmarieoliver@gmail.com, or Alison Hill, alirhill@comcast.net, if you cannot comply with this deadline.
May 15 & 16 – Event setup starts at 9:30. Lunch is provided both days! Friday, the 15th, is a full day so we’ll take you for as much time as you can give. Saturday, the 16th, we’ll have you home by 1:30 so you can put on your tourist outfit or you can come as yourself, and come back for the party at 4:00.
May 17 & 18 – Clean-up Helpers are needed the night and the morning after the event. This is crucial. The tour guides to Italy have been working for days and will go on a sit down strike soon. The parish hall must be ready for coffee hour the next day. Many hands make it go faster.
May 17 – Sunday morning after – Cleanup angels are needed after church services. Even if you did not go to the event, you can help us with your time and effort to clean up. There are so many things to be put away.
Scusi. Attenzione! – Details (graphic goes here)
Signup to help - Check out the signup sheets at the FOTH rolling bulletin board after Sunday services to:
1. give much needed help with volunteer jobs and committees
2. sign up your donations on the board or on this website
You may bid by proxy if you notify Joann Oliver or Alison Hill ahead of time. You will be assigned a bid number which you can use to advise one of the attendees to bid for you. Joann and Alison cannot take responsibility for bidding for you.
No-show admissions are not tax deductible. We purchased a dinner for every attendee. If you cannot attend the event due to unforeseen problems, you must let us know by two weeks before the event in order for us to switch your admission to a donation and receive a tax deduction form. If you must have a refund, we will deduct $10 per ticket to cover the credit card charges that are incurred.
Silent Auction and Raffle Donation Ideas Your donations are what make this night a success to raise the funds needed to help all these organizations that do the work of helping so many. If you need ideas, please talk to the folks at the table by the FOTH board.
Here are some of the most popular suggestions, or you can get creative:
- Dinners given by other parishioners are a favorite item. Join together with several families and put on a fun, themed dinner that will not tax anyone too much. We have not had very many of these available in the last few years for various reasons and they are tremendously popular.
- Vacation homes and timeshares are popular. Please be sure to display them with photos and important information.
- Gift certificates for restaurants, or services. Please help by soliciting these from your favorite restaurants. *Take a Solicitation Letter and an *Auction Donation Form with you.They will want these. Pick some up at the FOTH bulletin board in the parish hall, or in the entry of Grace House, and the office.
- Donations for all sorts of Events: game tickets, special outings, museum trips, tours
- Handmade items, original art, and we encourage creative new ideas. Please, no rummage.
- We are also asking for support from all ministries at Saint Timothy’s with gift cards to restaurants or services in lieu of gift baskets.
Important Forms
*Auction Donation Forms, BUFF color - Please fill these out and return them to us at the FOTH table by the rolling bulletin board or in the church office in the FOTH mailbox as soon as possible. Each donation item must be accompanied by a copy of this form so we know who sent it. The back has deadlines, directions, and display information. All forms (forms can be submitted sooner) and donations must be delivered no later than April 29, to the Grace House library, unless you notify us so we know to expect it later.
*Auction Solicitation Letters – Take some with you to your favorite restaurants to ask for dinner donations or services. Most business will require these letters to give a donation. These are located on the rolling FOTH bulletin board in the parish hall/ outside after Sunday services, or in the Grace House entry, or in the office during business hours of 9:30 to 4:00.
FOTH 2020 Auction Committee
For Event questions, contact:
Leslie Firth, lesliefirth@comcast.net, 925.683.7868,
Sally Shae Potts, sallyspotts@gmail.com, 925.785.9823
For Auction questions, contact:
Joann Oliver, joannmarieoliver@gmail.com
Alison Hill, alirhill@comcast.net
For Mystery Boxes info contact Kimberly Bryant, kharvin@hotmail.com.
For Reservations or Payments contact: Sally Shea Potts, sallyspotts@gmail.com, 925.785.9823
For web questions, contact: Leslie Firth, lesliefirth@comcast.net
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13th ANNUAL FOTH RESTAURANT DINNER EVENT!
To Be Determined
A wonderful evening at a local restaurant will be offered. Tickets will be sold at a fixed price and about 50 to 60 people will enjoy a special night out on the town.
Details will be on the DINNER EVENT page
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FOTH SURVEY REVIEW
In early 2018, we asked for your input with an FOTH survey and your responses gave us the chance to improve. We listened and made many changes where we could. Some of you are new and are not familiar with our fundraiser for Outreach. Here is a review of the information which addresses some of the topics raised in the survey.
“Concerned that the ticket price does not go to the beneficiaries.” Ticket Prices include much more than the price of your dinner. Our costs include the invitation and stamps, the paper, the software to help with registrations, banking, and website, decorations, rentals, catered food, bar, servers, and publicity for the event. In past years, we have hired servers from Trinity Center who are homeless, so we are serving out our mission to help people in need and they are helping us to do the hard work of serving and cleaning at our function. We keep our costs as low as we can while still giving you a nice dinner and a fun ambiance to provide an enjoyable experience so you’ll come back again next year. This event raises way more than what it costs.
“Younger people don’t come because it’s too expensive to hire a sitter.” By lowering the ticket prices to $40, and by offering free childcare, we hope to attract younger families to come and take part in this event. In 2018, only two children came to our childcare. In 2019 we had 11 children attend, so we will continue doing the free childcare so families can enjoy the event. We also are offering dinner tickets for youth for $15.
“Don’t like the asking for money at the paddle raise.” The Fund-A-Need (F-A-N) is an event where people donate money without purchasing an item. We raise our bid numbers on the backs of our catalogs. This practice of donating funds is used in 85% of non-profit and school fundraisers. It is now a major source of our donations which in 2017, brought in $16,000. In 2018, F-A-N made $17,930, and in 2019 it made an amazing amount, $23,960. F-A-N is totally tax deductible, while bidding in the Silent Auction is only tax deductible on what you bid above the value of the item. The F-A-N auction also allows people who did not win in the Silent Auction to still donate to the event that night. If all this still makes you feel uncomfortable, we do hope that you will still continue supporting Outreach with a mailed in donation. Helping make lives better is what we’re all trying to do here.
“How can I just give money to Outreach?” Monetary Donations are also given by very generous people who choose not to attend, don’t like big parties, or have conflicts but still want to support all the Outreach Ministries. Just fill out the RSVP card that comes with your invitation, and specify “Donation.” In 2017, a record $9,546 was donated in this manner. In 2018, you all blew us out of the water by sending in a new record in donations of $13,090, however, in 2019, donations sent in went down to $9,475 while the F-A-N went up by $6,030, which could be a reflection of our higher attendance last year.
"It all costs so much.” In order to raise money, we must spend money. Most of our costs are fixed and in 2017 we spent 17% of our gross to put on the event which netted $37,737.34. In 2018, with an increase in your donations, and with the higher results of the Fund-A-Need, we netted $45,962.51. Also, the yearly church budget allotment to Outreach was raised from $7,300 to $15,000 (thank you to the Vestry) and this totaled over $60,000 for grants to be made to our 14 Outreach organizations. It 2019, our net was about the same as in 2018.
What a great feeling to be able to send a grant for $7,650 to Trinity Center, a day shelter with many services for homeless men and women in Walnut Creek; or to send $7,800 to The Gretta Foundation to give a one year scholarship to a nursing student in Malawi, who when they graduate they will serve impoverished areas in rural villages; or to give a grant of $7,250 to Monument Crisis Center, a food pantry in Concord that offers many services for families, children and seniors; or to send a $5,100 grant to provide addiction recovery for clients at Options Recovery Services in Berkeley.
We have not been able to come up with a better way to raise this much money to help so many people who need our support and to do the work that we are called to do. It is interesting to note, that in 2013, on our 60th Anniversary celebration, we did not have FOTH. Instead, we asked for monetary donations to Outreach, and we received $18,000. So to those of you who say, “Why not just ask for donations instead of having an auction”, we can only deduce that some of you like to have a fun party while you donate to Outreach.
“The price of Auction items is out of my reach.” Auction Items will be offered in many price ranges. There are also raffle items where anyone can participate by putting in a dollar raffle ticket for an item. Of course, this is a fundraiser, so there will be people bidding big to support Outreach Ministries, but we appreciate and value every single donation, no matter what the size, whether it be monetary, time or talent, and no one needs to feel uncomfortable.
Paraphrasing what Brene’ Brown said about her fundraiser, “Those who donated large amounts was breathtaking. One big donation means more money goes to folks in need. Multiple people making smaller donations means more eyes and hearts on the problem. We need both. And you delivered.”
“The donations are the same every year.” Well, since we are getting the majority of our donations from our parishioners, you will probably see repeats of their wonderful donations. Last year, we made an effort to get more diversity, and there was quite a variety of new items. We no longer seem to get the favorites such as a large number of dinner parties given by parishioners, or as many offers for vacation homes for a variety of good reasons. We surely would love to have those. Kimberly Bryant introduced the Mystery Boxes last year and they were a resounding success. Donors were asked to provide contents of a box that would be valued at $150 or more. The boxes were anonymous and wrapped and were bid upon at the silent auction. After dinner, each bidder opened their Mystery box to be surprised and delighted by the contents. It was fun, and we look forward to having Mystery Boxes again this year. It raised $1,200. The Silent Auction in 2018 made $12,415, and in 2019 it raised $12,975, so it is still popular.
Join us to raise funds for all
our Outreach Ministries!
Graphic of "Ciao"
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SAINT TIMOTHY’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH
