Year in Review

well, I know that we are already a week into the new year and everyone else is well past their 'year in review' reports, but I did want to write about the highlights of 2010. So here we go!

Highlights:
The Project Smile Date Auction and our Anniversary Celebration- they both raised record amounts of money and generated lots of positive feedback. I'm already working on this year's events and it is great to have that energy to build on.

Expanding our calendar to include other children besides police/fire fighters with their kids. We still kept the same format, but it was nice to freshen the calendar up with the addition of children who are not related to police/fire fighters. It also helps broaden the marketing of the calendar.

Expanding to work with homeless shelters- this is something that I want to expand even more this year.

Growing PS to reach more police/fire departments and continuing to replenish the supplies of departments we already work with.

The Santa and Stilettos Shoe Ball- this was a smaller scale fundraiser and required less effort on our part, there is also a lot of growth opportunity. I'm looking forward to being involved this year and hopefully working with Reggie B on other events too.

The couple from Louisiana that sent us the $10 donation after reading about the woman with her credit card fraud- what a kind and generous gesture.

The grants we received this year- including the Rockland Trust Charitable Foundation, 200 Foundation and the Brown Foundation

The wonderful volunteers and other people that I've met this year who support our work.

Lowlights:

The woman who lost the airline tickets and pretended that she never received them. I'm still waiting to hear back from our cc processing company about the status of the arbitration.

Losing the support of the CT company that bought our Project Smile boxes for us- although on the upside, our new boxes arrived a couple of days ago and they look phenomenal.

Dealing with people who promise sponsorship/auction items/time and when it comes time to deliver on their promises, they seem to have disappeared from the planet.

Chasing down people to collect on sponsorship money owed and/or people who bid on silent auction items and never pay for them (thankfully we still have the items).

The stress that comes with having so many things to work and trying to divide my time among all the tasks- the Project Smile program, grant writing, event planning, networking, etc. It does get overwhelming at times

Well, those are some of the highlights and lowlights of 2010. It was a great year for Project Smile. I'm excited for what 2011 is going to bring. I'm a little behind on things already this month, I still haven't finished my plan for the year, so I'm going to be working on that tomorrow. Now, I'm off to read- my library book is due in 2 days and I still have another 200 pages to read and I don't think I can renew it again! Until next time friends..