Fundraising during the COVID-19 crisis

Fundraising during the COVID-19 crisis

A successful fundraiser through a global pandemic

“We were able to meet our goal, in fact, we exceeded it!”

When faced with a global pandemic, many would throw their fundraising aspirations out the window. But The Chris Rose Therapy Centre for Autism (CRTCA) decided to go ahead with their Global Coffee fundraiser… and good thing they did!

“We knew it could go either way with the current situation,” says Jenn Hammer of the CRTCA, “but we were fortunate that it did go very well.”

The CRTCA provides educational, therapeutic, life skills and family support services for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. They do receive some funds from local and provincial organizations but a lot of the money they bring in to continue operations, comes from their fundraising efforts. This is essential, to keep parent costs low.

“When we do fundraisers, our parents are always helping.” Hammer says they have an amazing parent group that spearheads their fundraisers. “Our parents will only partner up with a fundraiser that has a product they support. It is important that the companies we link ourselves with not only have quality product but are also quality companies.”

The CRTCA chose five different kinds of coffee, freshly roasted just for them. These included a ‘Sensory Sumatra’ and a ‘Be Kind Decaf.’ They also personalized the customer order form by adding their centre’s logo on.

The Centre says Global Coffee Fundraising was amazingly easy to work with and the staff were able to answer all their questions and keep the process streamlined.

Fundraising during the pandemic, the CRTCA found they had a few extra hurdles, since many people who would normally love to support them, weren’t in the position to, either financially or emotionally.

But despite this, they exceeded their goal.

Hammer says the coffee was so popular she didn’t even get a chance to try it! “I ended up having to give all my bags away to people who wanted to try it or had forgotten to order in time!”

Sounds like The Centre already has customers lined up for their next fundraiser.