Kocktails for Kitties 2017

We just held our annual fundraising dinner and silent auction event for P.A.L.S. – Kocktails for Kitties. With significant contributions from our fundraising efforts delivered via Agile and Scrum, our annual fundraiser was a tremendous success raising over $65,000! Outside of the biggest takeaway (or “lessons learned”), which is to begin fundraising activities closer to the beginning of the year when companies have not yet made or planned their yearly donations, we really learned a lot more about the sales side of the house. Even for a non-profit, we had to “sell” companies on the advantages of donating or sponsoring via finances or items to our cause (and not just tugging at their heartstrings about the countless animals our organization has helped over the past 10 years, although we did that to the fullest extent). We made sure that the companies each received a letter signifying what they donated and how we are a 501(c)3 organization, so that their donation is tax-deductible. We ensured that we stored each donor/company’s information in a database so that we can keep in touch with them for future events. And we recognized our companies on our web page and at our annual fundraising event. We’ll definitely take many of our action plans from our Sprint Retrospective meetings towards the planning of our annual fundraising event in 2018.