On November 11th, we held our first Annual Celebration of Faith for Hayden. When we started Faith for Hayden, this event was going to be our marquee event each year where we expected to bring the most people together and raise the most money. When we began planning for this event, we didn’t know what to expect. Our hope was 100 people would show up and we would be able to raise $50,000. That would have been success for the first year that we could build on for years to come. Little did we know the support of our family, friends, and co-workers went far beyond anything we could have dreamed of.
As we began to ask corporate donors to sponsor the event, we had a conversation with one of the best non-profit fundraisers in the business and her advice was to not limit our imagination or the imagination of our donors. Taking that advice we didn’t ask for specific dollar amounts to sponsor the event and we would trust that the support would come… and it did!
We took the same approach when it came to our expectation of how many people we expected to attend our first event. For planning purposes at the venue, we had to estimate a number of people so they could plan to have the staff to service the event. Our initial estimate was 80-100 people. After the invite initially went out, it seemed like even that estimate was going to be too much. We started to pick up some steam, but a week before the event it looked like we were going to be within our estimated range. However, as the event approached, the floodgates opened. The last week brought on another 60+ attendees!
In the end, we ended up again exceeding our attendance expectation and hosted 150 people to celebrate with us. More importantly, we exceeded our fundraising goal by a long shot! In total, we raised over $140,000, nearly triple our initial expectation!
For those that attended the event, we shared the following quote that embodies our journey with Faith for Hayden: “It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little – do what you can”. We think its fair to say that we did more than a little!
We continue to be overwhelmed at the support we have received from our community.
If you are interested in watching a video of the event, you can do so at the following link (https://www.facebook.com/faithforhayden). Find the video posted on November 11, 2022. Also included below is a video we shared at the event.
With love,
Matt and Courtney