6 weeks and good news

6 weeks until the date auction- can you imagine? I can't. I've been working since January on this and now it is only weeks away. It is nervous and exciting- more nervous actually- incredibly nervous to be honest. Good news today- we have a new sponsor on board and we have reached our sponsorship goal! It was a lot of work to get this sponsorship confirmed, for a while it looked like it wasn't going to happen, but I kept working it and following up and today it worked out. I had decided months ago that I wasn't giving up on this sponsorship until I had a definite confirmation or rejection. I was feeling a little bleak about it this morning, but I kept following up and it worked out for the best. I am feeling really relieved. Our event is an excellent fit with this company's service and they were involved with our event last year, so I know it will work out great.

I have two calendar photo shoots scheduled for tomorrow, they are both redoes, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything will work. It is a new camera and takes awesome photos, so there shouldn't be a problem, but I still get a little worried. I have two other photo shoots scheduled later in the week and 3 more that still have to be done after that. The deadline for photos is next Wednesday. I'm going away to Quebec city for a couple of days and the calendar has to be entirely in Lisa's hands by then so she can put it together. I still don't know what is going on with a month of advertising in the calendar. A former board member had committed to filling that spot, but has been unavailable for the last 3 weeks. I don't have anyone else to take that spot and I don't know what to do. It is really frustrating when people commit to helping and then disappear. I don't know what happened with him, I'm hoping that everything is OK- I need to know what is going on. I need him to fulfill his commitment and come through as he said he would. There is no time left and no viable options to take that spot and we need it taken care of to cover production costs.

Tomorrow, I also need to follow up with sponsors that owe us their sponsorship dollars. Between the two events and the calendar, we are owed quite a bit of money. I'm not particularly concerned that I won't get the money, since most of them I have worked with before and the new ones are very reputable, but it is very time consuming to keep following up with all these people. I followed up with some recently, but still haven't received their checks.

One of my other goals before I go away next week is to make serious progress on getting gift certificates for the date auction couples. We have been languishing at 23 gift certificates for way too long and considering we need 40- we need to step up the progress. I am working on putting together dates for the couples that are technically free (tours of various places, gallery visits, wine tastings, etc.) and then if we have to, buying a small gift card to a coffee shop or dessert place. We are able to purchase discounted restaurant gift certificates, but I want to avoid that because even buying a couple adds up and I need to keep costs down. Coffee shop gift certs. are cheaper and that paired with a free event is a decent first date. The goal is to have all 17 certificates done by next Thursday- it is kind of a lofty goal, but we'll see how close we get. I'd be OK if we got to at least 35.

Well, it is 12:15 and I need to get back to work. I have to send photos of the bachelors/ettes over to Lisa to include on our html flier. I also need to pull out all our 2008 tax info to send to the accountant so he can get our filing done (we got some extensions), my part is all done- I just need to put everything together to send over. I may wait until tomorrow for that- I'm trying to not fall back into the 3am bedtime routine. I also need to print more photo release forms and respond to a few emails.
Until tomorrow friends...