First things first. The garage sale isn’t a junk sale. Items donated need to be “clean, saleable treasures.” And another thing. Volunteering isn’t easy. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s worth it. These are a few of the things you learn from Lois Schimke, who has headed up the annual garage sale at Crossroads Church in Red Deer for the last three years.
The goal of the garage sale is to raise money for the church, and we’re not just talking about a few dollars and cents. This year the total amount raised through the sale was $18, 450. Almost all of the money came from items priced between 50 cents and four dollars.
For this year’s sale, however, the church decided to donate all of the funds to Save Africa Now. Pastor Dan Cochrane pledged to give all the money from the annual fundraiser to the Salama Project when David Youngren shared about the project with the church.
Lois remembers the morning of the announcement and how it brought spontaneous applause from the congregation who had just revised the church’s vision statement to “compassionately impact our world.” The commitment of the church leadership to give away what they knew would be well over ten thousand dollars suggests the church is ready to, as it were, put their money where their mouth is.
Besides being generous, Crossroads church also recognizes that raising money for people in need can be a very symbiotic experience, and even a little bit of fun. People came to the garage sale from all over the city. Some for hamburgers and apple pie, others to get their faces and fingernails painted. Many churchgoers were happy about the opportunity to donate things from their garage or the back of the closet that started to collect dust. And, inevitably, sharp-eyed bargain hunters could not resist fantastic deals before they rushed off to find the next garage sale on their hit list.
When the event was finished many of the things that did not sell were donated to charity. The whole event, from start to finish, was beneficial for people in Red Deer and in Africa.
But why are people investing time and money, and like Lois and her team of 20 volunteers, their hard work, to raise money for a project on the other side of the world?
What’s exciting about Save Africa Now and the Salama Project, Lois says, is that you know the money donated to the organization won’t be used up on administration fees. “People often hesitate, they ask, ‘where is my money going?’ With [the Salama Project] people are motivated by something practical – you can build two classrooms with $31,000!” With the money we gave, Lois notes, the church is helping to build one of those classrooms for children in great need.
And that is something real, something practical children in Tanzania will treasure for a long, long time. It was a lot of hard work, and it was worth every minute of it.
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