Habitat for Humanity Auction: Reflection

Silent Auction after it had been moved to the Pub

As you know if you've been keeping up with my blog, I was recently part of a Habitat for Humanity Auction! The funds for this event will be going towards funding a trip that a Service Learning course here at Albertus will be taking. The students in the Service Learning course will be going to Montreal this spring break to help build a house for a family in need. If you'd like to read my previous post about this event, click here.

The excitement of the event is over, and we did an awesome job pulling this off (if I do say so myself!). Between the two auctions, silent and live, we made a grand total of $1,700! Can you believe that?!

The first auction of the day was the Silent Auction. This was held in the Bree Commons which is on the ground floor of Aquinas Hall. Students and faculty alike were able to bid on items they liked throughout the day - some of the items were very popular and definitly ended up costing a pretty penny!

The second part of the auction was live at the pub, and this is the one I worked at! I was 1 out of 3 auctioneers who auctioned off the items. The live auction was for the big-ticket items such as 3 lazer hair removal appointments, a month of Zumba classes, a year's Costco membership, etc. We also moved the silent auction into the pub to get any last minute bids! It was a really good time and fun to see people battle it out for the items they had their eyes on!

All in all, it was a wonderful experience and it made way more money then we had expected! I'm going to log this event away as a huge success and keep it mind for any future fundraising needs I may come across.

Habitat for Humanity Auction

As you may have guessed by reading through my blog, at Albertus we do a lot to give back to the community both locally and on a larger scale. To read about other fundraising events I have participated in at Albertus, you can visit my posts about The Giving Tree or our Life Haven Raffle which took place last semester.

This semester, through my Grant Writing & Fundraising course, I get to participate in a fundraiser which is dedicated to the Habitat for Humanity organization. Interestingly enough, back when I was in high school I was involved in the local Habitat for Humanity chapter, so to be able to get back involved with this organization is a real treat!

Habitat for Humanity is an international organization that focuses on re-building communities, in the literal sense! Habitat for Humanity offers a way to give back by helping to fund and build houses for those who cannot afford to build their own.

Albertus is going to be sending some students to Montreal, Canada to build a house. This is going to be an awesome experience that unfortunately I am not going to be a part of. However, because my professor is very invested in the project, she has decided that one of the goals for our Grant Writing  & Fundraising class will be to apply what we learn to real-life organizations and put all the money we earn towards this great cause! I am really excited about this real-life application of what we will learn in this class because it will legitimize what we are learning and will really allow us to use our skills in a professional setting!

Though my class doesn't get to go on the Habitat trip, we are going to be very involved in the fundraising process; our main event will be an auction that will be taking place Thursday, February 28th in the Bree Commons from 4:30-5:30 pm. 

We are currently looking for donations from local vendors, so if you know anybody who would like to donate a good or service to this auction, certainly let me know! If you're not able to donate a good or service, you're still welcome to donate as little or as much money as you'd like... so if donating is something you'd like to learn more about, just shoot me an email at orpalmer@albertus.edu or comment on this post!

Does your school offer any programs where you get to give back to the community? If so, which organizations do you donate to? If not, which organizations are close to your heart that you wish your school would get involved in?

The Giving Tree

Giving Tree: located in Bree Commons
in Aquinas Hall

If you've been keeping up with my blog, you know that my Business Policy Seminar class is conducting two fundraisers for the local organization, Life Haven. We are doing this to promote the community spirit on our campus and to spread our good fortune to those less fortunate then us this holiday season. (To read about the first fundraiser we did, the Life Haven Raffle, feel free to read my previous blog post.)

Today we started the next phase of our donation: the Giving Tree. For this community outreach project we have a tree in the Bree Commons which is decorated with a bunch of paper ornaments. On the back of each ornament is a description of a donation needed; for example, one may say "Girl 15 Outerwear" which means we need some outdoor clothing suitable for a 15 year old girl such as mittens, a scarf, hat, etc.

We hope that people will take an ornament, purchase the desired items and return the item and the ornament to Professor Munson. We have left instructions under the tree (shown below) so that people can join in and help donate if they want to. 

Does your school do any charity work during the holiday season? If so, do you get involved and which charities do you partner with?

Life Haven Raffle

My lia sophia section at Life Haven raffle!

One of the cool things about Albertus is that the professors and curriculum really encourage you to get involved and give back to the community. In my Business Policy Seminar, a senior-level class, we are doing two different community outreach projects. 

The first community outreach project we are doing happened last night in the Bree Commons, where we did a raffle in which all proceeds went directly to Life Haven. Life Haven is a non-profit organization here in New Haven that helps women who have been dealt a tough hand in life, get back on their feet and help support their families. Life Haven offers these women and their families a safe place to stay and nutritious food to eat while they get back on their feet financially and emotionally. If you'd like to learn more about this organization, feel free to visit their website.

Our raffle was a huge success! We had some really great donated items... one student even donated a bran-spankin' new set of Beats by Dre (retail value between $200-$300!!). I donated two pieces of lia sophia jewelry because I am a lia sophia Advisor.

We ended up raising $454.11, which is much more then we expected! We are so excited to donate the money to Life Haven and get started on our second fund raiser (which begins TODAY) which is the Giving Tree located again in the Bree Commons.