Fundraising Blitz A Success for Kus-kus-sum
The day before the Blitz, the Provincial Government announced that they were providing the remaining funds, $650,000, for the acquisition of the site. This was very exciting news and meant that all funds raised by the Blitz will go towards protection and restoration activities!
The City of Courtenay, the K’ómoks First Nation and Interfor are currently working to finalize the sale and transfer the title of the property. An announcement will be made once this milestone step is completed.
The 2020 Kus-kus-sum 50/50 Raffle raised $6,580. The winner of the raffle was Nancy Gothard who generously donated it back to the project!
The Silent Auction raised $12,500, a huge thank you to K’ómoks First Nation Councillor Kathrine Frank for all her work gathering indigenous items and promoting the auction. Another big thank you to all the people and businesses who donated items and everyone who placed bids. Congratulations to the successful bidders, you got some awesome local goodies!
The last part of the Fundraising Blitz was the reverse telethon! We called it a reverse telethon because Instead of waiting for people to call us we worked with a network of people to call potential donors. From 1 pm – 4 pm, during the Reverse Telethon, Project Watershed showed a variety of short nature-based films relevant to the Kus-kus-sum project and streamed video updates from the telethon on Facebook. The event was recorded and is available on the Reverse Telethon Facebook event. We will also be releasing the short films on our website and Facebook throughout the holiday season for people to enjoy at home when they have some down time.
A huge thank you to Mayor Bob Wells from My Tech Guys who took his entire Saturday to help out with the technical requirements to run a smooth and extremely successful live stream, raffle and online auction. We would also like to thank all our volunteers and callers for the time and energy they put into this event. We could not have done it without you all!