Thursday, September 10, 2009

Closing In

Well, here we are- only a week (and a night) before the date auction and 3 weeks to the anniversary event. How are things going? Well, before I go into all that, I just wanted to share something. I was in Boston at a Meet Up dinner at La Verdad, an absolutely delicious Mexican restaurant near Fenway- after dinner, I stopped next door to check out a venue that wants to hold meet up events with us (it was a very nice place), as I walked back to my car, I kept thinking how happy I was just to be- I was happy that I was alive and healthy and happy just to be myself. Maybe that happy feeling was rubbing off, because I noticed that random people smiled at me as I walked up Landsowne Street. It is so nice to have that feeling of contentment.

OK, so back to the latest. Well, things are going OK. I sold 13 more date auction tickets today which was great. We only need 33 more to match what we sold the night before last year's date auction. I definitely think that we are on the right track. The only thing I'm worried about is that a lot of the marketing has already come out- Yelp and Going featured us in this week's newsletter, the Stuff magazine ad already came out (that does stay on the shelves for all of next week too) and our dedicated BEG email has come out. We do have our big newspaper promo on the day of the event, so that is great as a reminder and for people looking for something to do that night and BEG is making us a hot pick next week. So far, we have 138 peeps signed up to attend on FB, that includes a bunch of people being auctioned. I have this event in as many places as possible. Melissa from Hello Stiletto left a comment today about how she is seeing our event everywhere, so that is good. I'm still way short on gift certificates. We've added another 2 bachelors- one who I thought had dropped out, but he just sent me his info (he's very good looking, so I have to include him) and another firefighter. I'm still waiting on the profile info for 2 guys before I can get our program finalized and I'm waiting for our last sponsor ad- I've been waiting for that for a few months now and I really can't wait much longer.

I've also been working on the Anniversary event- that needs a lot of help in getting people to attend. I've been sending out a lot of invitations, I posted it on FB today and tomorrow, I'll post it for my meet up groups. I only have a few people confirmed to attend so far, that's normal, but it is so stressful. I don't understand why it is so difficult to get people to attend. It is a wonderful event- we have 96 awesome silent auction items, including Southwest Airline tickets, Direct Air tickets to FL, round trip transportation for two on LimoLiner, the luxury bus company to NYC, tickets to the Colbert Report and Jimmy Fallon shows, golf outings, restaurant gift certificates, white water rafting trips, kayaking, lots of autographed sports items, Celtics tickets, ice cream cakes, Sharks tickets and signed hockey stick, the TV Diner "Diner for a Day" certificate which gets you featured on the Billy Costa show, autographed Jay Leno t-shirt, children's book and photo, Patriot Brewer cert. from Sam Adams which gets you a case of Sam Adams beer per month for an entire year- there is a long list of things on our website. I've been working for 9 months to get these items.

We have an awesome speaker, Karen Swensen, the NECN news anchor and we have Miss Massachusetts as well. Tickets are only $10 and include a calendar. We have live music, complimentary Beija Rum cocktail, delicious appetizers and of course the debut of our 2010 calendar. This is the type of event that if I saw it, I would love to attend. It has been such a tough year fundraising, so we really need this event to be a big success. I wish there was a magic solution to get people to attend. I did meet with a woman that I met at DWC who helps business people network, she was very excited about helping us promote the event. I liked her a lot, hopefully, she will be able to get quite a few people to attend.

It is funny how important it is to keep following up- there are some businesses that promised items months ago and I have had to leave 5 or more messages following up to get the items. Most of these items, I have finally received. If I didn't keep being so persistent, there would be no way I would have received the donations. It is so important to keep following up with people. There are still two big items that have been promised that I haven't received yet, but I'm going to keep following up with them tomorrow.

Well, that's it for tonight. Tomorrow, I'm back to work on date auction and anniversary event. We need more gift certificates for the couples, I'm losing track of how many we need because I had counted in people that had promised items, but those items haven't materialized and so now, the gift certs. that I have gotten recently- some of them are simply replacing the ones I already thought I had- it is quite frustrating.

Anyways, I'm off to bed at a decent hour, it is 12:30- an early night. Until next time friends.. please wish me happy gift certificate hunting.

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