Mayor's Walk building steam

When you work with a community organization or any kind of non-profit charity, your work is cut out for you especially when it comes to the dicey proposition of fundraising.

There’s no two ways about it: you have to do it not just to thrive but often just to survive. As if that wasn’t pressure enough, you generally have to rely on volunteers to organize and manage these campaigns and they often result in singular events like a dinner and dance, silent auction, golf tournament, or some variation with those features. Whatever the case, it’s a massive effort that can just as easily succeed as fail.

Enter the Mayor’s Walk. Now in its 10th year, the established participation-based event has a loyal following as well as a growing identity as the premiere fundraising opportunity of the year. Many groups see it as a ready-made solution to their sticky problem. It boasts the least amount of energy for each group to expend coupled with the greatest possible benefit. All that they have to do is provide a minimum of three volunteers to help run the walk. After that, all that is needed are participants collecting pledges. There are no registration fees. There is no percentage of the proceeds collected by the organizers. Every last cent goes to each participant’s charity or charities of choice.

For the community groups, it’s like having a pre-arranged marquee event. It’s too good to be true, except, of course, that it is true. Just ask Michelle Radey. The executive director of the St. Albert Day Care Society (SADCS) says that if it weren’t for the Mayor’s Walk, the SADCS almost certainly wouldn’t be able to do what it does now.

“It’s our biggest fundraiser of the year,” she admitted, referring to the handful of other methods that the society is involved in, including some fairly standard methods like selling chocolate bars or specific weekend-based activities for parents and others.

Charities can still make handsome returns on chocolate bar sales but it really only goes so far towards helping out the bottom line. This is especially true when you consider that it often takes a squadron of volunteers weeks of treading the sidewalks to solicit their friends, neighbours and co-workers for purchases. The amount of effort expended is staggering for the payoff. Selling 25 boxes of chocolate almonds at $2 each averages a profit of approximately $25.

Radey said her organization has been able to garner tens of thousands of dollars in straight donations over the SADCS’s history of participating in every single Mayor’s Walk. Last year, it had the highest amount of donations – $10,141 – collected by any one organization. That money went towards general operating costs and even helped them to pay to replace some playground equipment, a capital expense that could otherwise have taken years to cover. Now consider this was all accomplished over the course of a few hours strolling around the park on one Saturday morning in June.

In fact, it is so successful for them that they have parlayed it as the main feature of a larger affair for all of the children’s parents at all seven of the society’s locations. The Mayor’s Walk was designed to bring the people of St. Albert together for the good of the entire community and the effect is that this seed is growing on its own outside of it.

In 2009 approximately 400 people brought in $112,000 for 35 groups, beating the goal of $75,000. Each group that raised at least $1,000 was eligible for the Mayor’s Purse worth $2,940. This year’s goal is $200,000.

The deadline for groups to register is May 28. Charitable tax receipts will be provided to all donors who pledge $25 or more.