EVENT DETAILS
The Fruits of the Harvest – Sat. August 17th, 2024
Dates and Times to Remember
Decorations work party dates are to be determined (TBD.) Look for news on the weekly announcements on Thursdays, and in the Sunday Bulletin. Please bring scissors and a sack lunch or snack. Sign up on the "Helpers Sign Up" page on this website. Let Leslie Firth know if you are crafty and can do some projects at home.
July 7th to August 14th - Volunteer Sign up at the "Helpers Sign Up" page with Sign Up Genius (preferred option) or the FOTH bulletin board on Sundays after services.
July 7th to August 4th - Donations of gift cards: Please donate gift cards for the event. To support FOTH, we're asking parishioners, and our church ministries to donate gift cards in lieu of gift baskets. Some will be in the mini silent auction and some will be in the raffles. We may bundle some gift cards together as prizes.
Deliver them in an envelope with a donor form and write “FOTH” on the envelope. Put them in the Outreach box in the church office (hours Tues. - Thurs. 10 to 3.) After hours you may put them in the locked mailbox outside of Grace House, or hand them to Leslie F. or an attendant by the FOTH bulletin board outside, or in the parish hall after Sunday church services. These gift cards can be brought in anytime starting July 7th and no later than August 4th.
August 5th – Early Bird $50 pricing ends. Price goes to $60 per person on the 6th. Youth dinners are $18. The price is $70 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 come to the event. Please contact Leslie Firth or Sally Potts at foth@sainttimothysdanville.org.
August 4th – Childcare registration ends today. We're providing free childcare so you can all come to have a funnighttogether. Have you filled out a form for childcare that is on this website? There are more in the Grace House entry, the church office, and at the FOTH bulletin board outside or in the parish hall after the services. Please sign a waiver at the church office. parish@sainttimothysdanville.org
August 4th - Last day to bring donation items of wine for the Wall of Wine and for the bar. Please bring them to the attendant at the blue FOTH rolling bulletin board on Sundays after the services, or during week days, bring them to the Grace House library (office hours Tues. to Thurs. 10 - 3:00.) All wine should be accompanied by a yellow donor form so we know who donated it. There will be forms in the library.
If you cannot comply with the August 4th deadline, let us know at foth@sainttimothysdanville.org so we can make other arrangements.
Aug. 15th, - Thursday: Event setup starts – Help get the market lights in the parish hall working again and other misc. jobs. Start at 10 am. to whenever.
Aug. 16th - Friday at 10:00 and Saturday at 9:30 The big setup days: Lunch is provided both days! Let's turn the parish hall into a barn and use your imagination.
Friday, the 16th is a full day until about 3:00 so we’ll take you for as much time as you can give.
Saturday, the 17th, we’ll have you home by 1:30 so you can put on your Cowboy or Cowgirl outfits, or come as yourself, and be back for the party that starts at 4:00. Don’t be late. A lot happens between 4 and when dinner starts at 5:45.
Sat. 17th and Sun. 18th – Clean-up Ranch hands are needed the night after and the morning after the event. This is crucial. The ranch hands have been working for days and their gittyup and go will have gittyup and gone. The parish hall must be ready for coffee hour the next day. Many hands make it go faster. Chairs and tables must be put away, and decorations go down.
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 still to be to be put away.
Whoa! Hold up for Details
Sign up to help - Check out the volunteer and donations signup sheets on this website at “HELPERS SIGN UP” with Signup Genius to give much needed help with volunteer jobs and donations. This is the preferred option. There is also a signup at the FOTH rolling bulletin board outside or in the parish hall after Sunday services.
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.
Your gift card or silent auction donations:
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 suggestions, or you can get creative:
- Gift certificates for restaurants, or services. Please help by donating or soliciting these from your favorite restaurants.
We are asking for support from all ministries at Saint Timothy’s with gift cards to restaurants or services, or for events in lieu of gift baskets.
- If you feel comfortable asking for gift cards or donations, please take an *Auction Solicitation Letter and an*Auction Donation/Receipt Form with you. Most businesses will require these letters to give a donation. These are located on the rolling blue FOTH bulletin board outside after Sunday services or in the parish hall, or in the Grace House entry, or the church office.
Important Forms
*Auction Donation/Receipt Form - beige 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 and directions. All forms (forms can be submitted sooner) and donations must be delivered no later than August 4th to the Grace House library, unless you notify us so we know to expect it later. Contact: foth@sainttimothysdanville.org
*Auction Solicitation Letters - Take some with you to your favorite restaurants or places of business that you use often.
FOTH 2024 Committee – fruits and nuts of the Harvest
For Event questions, contact: foth@sainttimothysdanville.org
Leslie Firth, lesliefirth@comcast.net, 925.683.7868, Co-chair
Sally Shae Potts, sallyspotts@gmail.com, 925.785.9823 Co-chair
For questions on silent auction donations, contact Kimberly Bryant: kharving@hotmail.com
For gift card donation questions, contact Kimberly Bryant, kharvin@hotmail.com.
For Food Chair, contact Tania Hanson De Young, taniahd@comcast.net
For Reservations or Payments, contact: Sally Shae Potts, sallyspotts@gmail.com, 925.785.9823
For web questions, contact: Leslie Firth, lesliefirth@comcast.net
FOTH SURVEY REVIEW
For the benefit of newcomers, we are including this information on a survey done in 2018 to give you some background on the event.
In early 2018, we asked for parish 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 who are in need a work, 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 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 $18.
“Don’t like the asking for money at the Fund-A-Need.” The Fund-A-Need (F-A-N) is an event where people donate money without purchasing an item. We hold up 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. During Covid, we only had virtual and low-key fundraising with no F-A-N. In 2023, we raised $17,000 at the F-A-N. This 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.
"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.
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.
During Covid years, all of you opened your hearts and pocket books to help those who were suffering and in dire need. We had to revert to 3 years of virtual FOTH. We netted $68,905 in 2020. We had two anonymous donations of $15,000 and we used emergency reserves of $10,000 given for this purpose. We gave record grants of $93,550 to all our organizations in 2020 throughout the year. I don't know if that will ever happen again.
In 2022, we gave away grants of $54,200. In 2023, we had cost increases across the board for everything as was indicative of what was happening around the country. The event netted $52,000 and with the annual addition of the church budget allotted amount of $15,000, plus other donations, we ended up giving grants of $71,300 to 15 organizations.
What a great feeling to be able to send a grant for $9,000 to Trinity Center, a day shelter with many services for homeless men and women in Walnut Creek; or $9,000 to Loaves & Fishes, who serve nourishing hot lunches out of 5 dining rooms; or to send $5,500 to
GAIA Global Health in Malawi whose programs impact AIDS with many services; or to give a grant of $7,500 to Monument Crisis Center, a food pantry in Concord that offers many services for families, children and seniors; or to send a $5,500 grant to provide addiction recovery for clients at Options Recovery Services in Berkeley.
The net proceeds from FOTH gathered in one large pot and distributed in grants by the Outreach Committee to all our Outreach Ministry partners depending on size and need, number of people being served, impact of our grants on the organization and more. This list of Outreach Partner Ministries and all other information on our Outreach endeavors is posted in the Saint Timothy’s church website: www.sainttimothysdanville.org under 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 following pertains to when we had a large silent auction in Spring of 2019:
“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. 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 in 2019, 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. It was fun and we had Mystery Boxes again in 2023. It raised $1,200. The Mystery Boxes will be on hiatus for 2024. The Silent Auction in 2018 made $12,415, and in 2019 it raised $12,975, so it is still popular. This year in 2024, we will try to offer more silent auction items as we slowly return to a bigger silent auction, but we really need more leaders to help organize this.
Join us to raise funds for all
our Outreach Ministries!
SAINT TIMOTHY’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH
