Welcome August!

Well, August has been here for a week, so I'm a little late with the welcoming the month. So what's new? Times are getting a lot busier. Last Saturday, we did a silent auction at the Summer Beer Fest organized by Boston Event Guide. They've been very supportive of us and let us do silent auctions at their wine/beer fests throughout the year. We auction off a variety of autographed sports pictures. We raised approximately $1,000 which was very good. It was in keeping with what we usually raise. It's always hard to predict which items are going to do well in the auction. People get in bidding wars for some photos, while others only get one or two bids. The good thing is that everyone paid for and took their items with them, so I didn't have to deliver anything. That is usually a bit of a hassle. I used the PayPal mobile card reader device for the first time. I have a credit card machine that I bring to events, but I have to use it in the store/forward mode which takes all the data, then I bring it back to the office and upload the info via the phone line. You don't know if someone gives you a bad card when you're at the event. Having the PayPal reader is good because the transaction is completed right then. The downside is that PayPal takes a higher percentage for their fee, it is slower if you're doing a lot of transactions (like at our bigger events) and I had to keep switching card readers because they would stop scanning after a few transactions. You can input the card number manually, but then PayPal takes a higher fee if you do that instead of swiping. I'm going to look into other mobile card reader options and see if there are others with no fee and a lower transaction fee.

In other news- we dropped off boxes of stuffed animals, books and coloring books/crayons to Fitchburg Police. The domestic violence advocate had reached out, asking for more items. We've been donating to Fitchburg for a number of years. Last week, I dropped off more stuffed animals and books for Worcester Police. They needed extra items to give out to children at Worcester's National Night Out event this week. They like to give out items to children in need who attend the event. Of course we were happy to help. I need to email DCF to set up our next donation of items.

We're working on winding down work on the 2015 calendar so our designer can start working on it. I only have a few more photo shoots to do. I still have 1 1/2 months that need to be sold. I've reached out to a number of potential sponsors. I received a tentative commitment from one business today and hopefully should get some good news from another sponsor soon. Keep your fingers crossed for us please! I need to get this all taken care of soon so I can move on to other things and focus on our big fall events.

Well, I'm off to work on some other things and eat some more watermelon. I've already had my fill of homemade chocolate chip cookies tonight, so now watermelon feels like health food! I have a meeting in Boston tomorrow morning with a potential sponsor for an exciting partnership. I'm excited for the meeting, so keep your toes crossed that it goes well for us! Until next time friends...