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“We wanted to do a social distancing fundraiser where anybody could send a cookie to a student”, said sophomore class officer Brayden Wisniewski.
Just in time for Valentines Day, it was announced February 4-6th that the Sophomore class would be selling Good L’Oven Cookie Grams to be delivered to someone special. To order these cookies you had to fill out an order form and pay $3 through Venmo or check and your cookie was delivered with a message of your choice!
COVID was not the only obstacle that Mrs. Reilsono and the Sophomore officers faced when they had to deliver these cookies. On Tuesday, February 9th, the day officers were going to hand-deliver the cookies to students, a snow storm hit, causing a pivot to virtual school that day. Equally important, no students would be in the building to get their Cookie Grams.
“Had we known that snow was coming we probably would have rushed them out to the group A kids on Monday afternoon. When school was closed on Tuesday we had no choice. [A couple of my officers] spent Wednesday in separate cars delivering them. We spent hours in the car…[it] took a lot of gas” said Mrs. Reilsono.
“It was unexpected that we would have to deliver group A’s to their house,” said sophomore class officer Brayden Wisneiwski. But the effort did have results.
“It was successful” said Wisnewski, with the sophomore class selling over 180 cookies at $3 each. The fundraiser ended up making about $750 in profit. The goal was to raise 100 dollars, and thanks to a generous at-cost donation from Good Lovin’ to the sophomore class, the fundraiser worked. “Good loven was also very generous and gave us most of them completely donated and the other ones she gave us an extremely good discount on. She was not getting hit with a lot of donations right now and they are not struggling so it was the perfect storm for us.” said Mrs. Reilsono.
The Sophomore class also relied on two payment sources – Venmo and checks – instead of a more traditional cash option. It was not a deterrent, as purchases included AHS cheer buying 27 so each cheerleader received a cookie.
“Paying with Venmo was so easy for people to just see the email on their phone and do it and it was over. It was no sending money in with your kid or anything like that so it was actually great and we had to order more cookies. I hope that there is something like that venmo but that was so great not to have to count money afterwards and wonder if it was missing. It was a lifesaver truthfully.”
The Junior class, led by Mrs. Negron and Ms. Wahl, also continued fundraising but with two efforts. The first was a Valentine’s Day Zoom Bingo event,.
The event was held on Valentines Day at 6:00PM on Zoom. They used a website called myfreebingocards.com to play.
While they expected to make about $2,000 they well exceed this amount and almost doubling it. They made an estimate of around $3,800, mostly collected through Venmo, to go towards the Junior Class. It was a very “fun activity to do during this crazy COVID time” said Mrs. Negron.
Even thought there were some difficulties like glitches in calling numbers, echo issues and sound issues (especially with wearing masks) it was a great way to bring people together in these tough times. They would “absolutely” do something like this again in the future, so If this sounds fun to you, be on the look out for another Bingo fundraiser!
The second fundraiser is more traditional, the type that normally raises funds for a variety of clubs – in-person candy sales.
In addition to the Valentines Day Bingo event, Juniors can raise funds with a traditional Sarris candy fundraiser pictured here. Junior English classes taught by Mrs. Barkovich, Mr. Pastore and Mr. Tuffiash had forms to distribute throughout the week of February 8th. For 2020-2021, students visited school only twice a week, meaning distributing a form like this now takes a full week in order for a teacher to see all their students.
