2011 Bake Sale Season: Follow Up

A Look Back On Our 2011 Great American Bake Sale Season

Online Events:



Participants could purchase virtual raffle tickets by donating to our bake sale campaign online at the Cookie Central Team Page.  The winner of the$50.00 cookie gift basket was drawn in YouTube video found HERE. In all, the promotion brought in just over $200.  Keep an eye out for Dollar Days in 2012 when we will be raffling off an even better prize! **Congratulations to the winner Joel Owens**



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We donated $1 for every Facebook Fan that took the No Kid Hungry Pledge and posted it to our Fan Page Wall.  What we learned from this campaign is that simplicity is key when hosting an online promotion.  The more steps people need to take, the more people get lost along the way.  Why do we say that?  Well, the campaign brought in...$1.00 (10 healthy meals for a hungry child ).  We are looking forward to hosting a spin off of this event in 2012.
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By donating directly to our GABS campaign, people received discount coupons for Cookie Central.  While we loved the idea, we think this promotion would have seen better results (we raised $70) if offered at an event as opposed to online.   We do several exhibition tables throughout the year and are hoping to incorporate this promotion into one, if not more, in 2012.


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This was our favorite online promotion of 2011!  We teamed up with Lazarus House Ministries, to give people a way to not only support our campaign, but have that support make a direct and immediate impact on the people in our area fighting hunger, poverty and homelessness.  Care packages could be purchased for one of the families or individuals residing in Lazarus House's transitional housing, Capernaum Place.  The funds raised from the sale of these packages were donated to our GABS campaign and the packages were scheduled to be delivered for Capernaum Place's  Halloween party.  The total raised from this promotion was $140.  If Lazarus House Ministries will have us again, we would be thrilled to include this promotion in 2012.

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We donated 100% of all membership fees from our rewards program The Fat Baker Club.  This was another tough promotion, and are thinking it is because we tried to host this week long event during our vacation.  We felt we did not give the promotion the attention it needed, so we also ran the same promotion during the entire month of October (results yet to be tallied). This event raised $120.






Events In and Around Town

Our Wonderful Sponsor
We went into this event with no intentions of selling anything!  Because BJ's has been such an incredible sponsor to our campaign over the past 3 years, I am always happy to provide a sample table for Taste of the Town.  However, when we started sharing with people information about who Share Our Strength is and how we work throughout the year to support their efforts, people couldn't help but get involved.  While the $43 dollars brought in is nominal, we had the opportunity to educate so many and found that people in our area -especially when eating free cookies- are very responsive and looking to help.
 
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A small event were we hosted a 50/50 raffle during the comedy show for the night.  Something I learned, the comedians DO NOT like when people sell raffle tickets during their segment!  All in all a super fun and easy event to host that brought in an additional $100 for our campaign.

  
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This event was followed up with our blog post "Our Bake Sale Debotchery".  With missing tiers,  the lack of a tent and hecklers, this was a difficult bake sale.  I'll own up to many of the mistakes being my own, but like with any failure (not really a failure raising $200, but you know what I mean) it's a valuable learning process.  Will we attend next years Kids Fest? Most likely, no.  But we do have in the works an event just for kids in 2012 that you'll just have to wait to hear about ;)


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Can you believe after 3 years of working this event I STILL haven't seen a sheep sheared?  Hopefully that will all change when we revisit the common next spring.  This was one of our best bake tables of the year bringing in almost $500.  And Jessica, if you happen to read this, our first year at the event the kids organized a flash mob to Cotton Eye Joe!


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This event was all about cookie and brownie platters, coffee cakes and pies.  Just about everyone goes to (or hosts themselves) a 4th of July party.  We figured that people would need last minute things to bring to their BBQs, and boy were we right.  This bake sale almost sold out, and raised about $350.



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If you want people to buy from your bake sale out of pity, set up under a tent with a lit grill on a 95 degree day!  The event was just shy of raising $300. We loved all the support we received from The Meat House this year and hope they will continue to join us in the fight against childhood hunger in America in 2012. 




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Eve Lee rocked this bake sale motivating nearly 70 people to bake, 3 of the 5 buildings at Philips to get involved and raising over $4,300!  Over the course of 3 years Eve has raised over $10,000 for Great American Bake Sale.  She will be coordinating Taste of the Nation Boston 2012 and was nominated for Great American Bake Sale's 2011 Community Leadership Award

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Awesome, awesome, awesome!!  55 golfers, 22 hole sponsors, 34 raffle prizes, a silent auction, tequila shooters, wine tasting, a band.....oh, and a $3,000 match from Adobe that would bring our event total to over $6,500!  We are so looking forward to building this event into one of our areas premier tournaments.



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As you can see, nothing too glamorous.  This was, however, the absolute most fun I've ever had at a bake sale!  It may have been because it was low-key, or maybe it was the support of an RV full of people...or it could have been the cold beer...  Either way, this -our final bake sale for 2011- was awesome.
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