St. Paul’s of Benicia Community Meal
The Sharpening Fundraiser
Sharpening fundraiser?! To support the Community Meal in Benicia, I organized a day-long knife and tool sharpening fundraiser recently. Through this program, St. Paul’s of Benicia feeds the underprivileged in our community.
It’s especially gratifying to know when all your work and donations goes for a worthy purpose. The Community Meal, run by volunteers, is prepared and serves over 20,000 meals per year! As you might expect, it survives purely on donations and volunteers.
Volunteers preparing Community Meal
The Big Day
The community response was terrific. Knives, scissors, garden tools, it didn’t mater. 89 people participated by paying for sharpening, knowing 100% of their money was going directly to the Community Meal program.
8 Volunteers helped with drop-off, pick-up, payments, and day-of promotions. We had 3 sharpeners working out of 2 mobile sharpening trucks. Thank you to the countless volunteers and local businesses that helped to promote and support this event in advance. It was a true team effort.
The Afterglow
The day before the sharpening event, I had made, what seemed to be a crazy goal to raise $5,000 in 1 day. Well, WOW! We did $6,000! I was not expecting the great feelings I felt afterwards. It was so thrilling, especially considering knowing their donations have been losing steam lately. Those funds directly help our friends and neighbors.
Giving is a great thing. All of us can always find someone that doesn’t have it as good as us. Golden State Sharpening, and our team of volunteers gave 1 of 365 days. There’s no harm in that.
St. Paul’s Sharpening Fundraiser Volunteers
Exponential Giving
I hope to motivate some of you to do a little something extra in your community. There are youth programs, food programs, and many other ways to improve your city, county, or area.
There are also people and companies that are willing to support different causes. They are just looking for avenues to give through. It continually amazes me how rich our country is, while there are too many problems to count.
Just pick something that resonates with you personally and locally, and get involved!
