Monday, June 30, 2008

Our Year So Far

Well, here we are- 16 minutes until this year has officially reached the half way mark. I can't believe how quickly 2008 is going by- it seems like these last few years absolutely fly by. I was thinking tonight- as I was intensly cleaning my office- about the highlights and lowlights of this year so far:

Highlights:
Operation Elder Care program- working with the nursing homes is definitely a good expansion.
Reaching more police and fire departments
The TJX Foundation and Boston Bruins grants
Speaking at the MassStar Conference in May- I spoke to 100 students about entrepeneurship and Project Smile.
The auction items donated for our 5th Anniversary Celebration
Jen's event in Rockland
Our date auction shaping up to be a great event
Blogging!
My list book
Calendar photos
Our new web host
Amy and Leni- two new volunteers
The fact that we are celebrating 5 years in October!

Lowlights:
The struggle in getting the calendar ads sold
Donation cutbacks
Lack of reliable volunteers
Difficulty in obtaining gift certificates for date auction
The struggles that went into getting the date auction to where it is now
Amount of time that fundraising takes.
Increased expenses- GAS
The fact that I need more help so that Project Smile can grow the way it needs to.

As you can probably tell, this has been a good year so far. It is far from perfect, but as long as we're growing, we're doing OK. Fundraising is of course a constant struggle and we are nowhere near where we need to be financially.

So what else is new? Today, I was working on scheduling more photo shoots, working on auction items, date auction things and working on obtaining a special guest for our anniversary celebration. There were some things that came up this afternoon, so I didn't get everything done. Also, this week can be a pretty difficult week to reach people because of 4th July vacation.

Well, I'm going to go back and keep cleaning my office and send some emails. I'm starting to get a little tired, but there is still a lot that I want to get done. So until tomorrow friends...

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