Joy Templeton and Dawn Merchant, owners of Once Upon a Thyme and Dawn’s Delectables, provided food for the VIP packages for this year's Power of the Purse.
Each year, United Way of Lewis county’s Power of the Purse fundraiser attracts well over 300 attendees and raises tens of thousands of dollars for the organization’s mission to lift 30 percent of Lewis County families out of poverty by 2030.
The organization relies on a series of major event fundraisers, which all became impossible when COVID-19 led to stay-at-home orders and crowd restrictions earlier this year.
However, United Way thought fast and switched to virtual events, with considerable success. Last week’s virtual Power of the Purse — kicked off Tuesday with an online auction lasting through Friday night — raised $27,000, just $4,000 less than their in-person event in 2019.
Earlier this year, United Way also hosted Chef’s Night Out, rebranded as “Chef’s Night In,” in a virtual format.
“I think now that we’ve got two of these virtual events under our belt we really feel like our county has been extremely interested and supportive of these virtual events,” said Angela French, resource development director for United Way of Lewis County. “We were so happy, so happy with how it turned out. Our auction alone — all of the purses that we put online did over $10,500.”
The auction ran online from Tuesday afternoon through Friday evening and had 270 bidders. Some bids came in all the way to the last minute.
“It did allow for more engagement for a longer period of time,” French said.
Participants who bought the VIP package also got a charcuterie board from Joy’s Once Upon a Thyme with dessert from Dawn’s Delectables.
While these two events have been successful in a virtual format, French said some of United Ways other yearly events will just have to be canceled. The annual Community Partnership Luncheon gathers hundreds of community members for lunch and speeches from United Way members and community supporters, which would be difficult to recreate virtually, French said. The other large event, the United Way golf tournament originally scheduled for September, will also be canceled.
“Instead of doing the Community Partnership Luncheon we’re going to pull together a very strong online campaign for giving to United Way.
For more information, go to www.lewiscountyuw.com
