When we hosted our first fundraising dinner last year in Chicago, we planned to make it an annual event.
But COVID-19.
Like everybody else, we’re getting creative this year to continue our work partnering with the people of the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota. Hope Camp went online this summer. Our fundraiser did, too, with our first online silent auction.
In response, you sponsored cheery Christmas candy baskets, autographed copies of books and coffee mugs celebrating the White Earth Nation.
You started bidding wars on collections of apple butter, wild rice from White Earth and coffee from Native Coffee Traders, which is prepared using traditional methods by Native people, which allow them to maintain their cultures and Indigenous lifestyles.
You were just as excited as we are about resources like “Bowwow Powwow” by Brenda Child and “One Church, Many Tribes” by the late Richard Twiss.
You brought your own dinner to our #GivingTuesday virtual event, where HFtFN board members Ricky Smith, Amanda Docter and Emily Miller shared some teachings, laughs and information about our favorite silent auction items.
And you made the whole thing a huge success. In the end, we raised more than $1,309.50 — a stunning amount for a small organization like ours. That’s more than 65 percent of the very ambitious goal we set for the silent auction, and it helps keep us online, legal and insured in a year in which we aren’t able to bring in money in the ways we usually do. (If you missed it, you still can donate to our low-key, year-end fundraiser to help us meet that goal.)
Your auction items are in the mail now, and we’d love to hear your feedback about the online silent auction: What would you like to see if we do this again next year?
