Those were the words we kept hearing time after time from our departing guests as our first fundraising party was drawing to a conclusion on Sat., Oct. 13th. It was an emotional evening, filled with touching and personal stories of our guests with spinal cord injuries, mixed with the exhilarating performance of sisters Krystina and Robyn Jackson who brought down the house with their energetic and fun two-song set. They sure know how to put on a show, don’t they?
Robyn and Krystina Jackson got the evening started with a two-song set.
As for what we were able to accomplish? Thanks to your incredible generosity, we netted over $31,000 in proceeds plus, three individuals became Angel Investors (for donations of $1,000 or more) and six individuals became Golden Angel Investors (for annual donations of $1,000 for the next five years) in addition to other pledges. For the year, we have raised nearly $100,000 which is a large sum but in reality, we will need to increase our fundraising considerably in the coming years to have the type of impact on the spinal cord injury population in Northern California and help support our Road To Recovery, Remote Mobile Clinics, Care Packages and other programs.
Your generosity continues to INSPIRE us to do more for the spinal cord injury community. Thank you.
— Nick & Franklin, co-founders
plans for 2019: how we’LL BE investing your contributions
We plan on finalizing our 2019 Goals & Objectives before the end of this year and with the increase in funding we’ve received, look for us to ramp up our existing programs and initiate a couple of new ones.
Arash Bayatmakou shared the complex and challenging journey a person with SCI must navigate.
Our Road To Recovery program is on track to fund 15 individuals for 2018. At the party, you met Casey Proud and Mia Gonzalez, two of the recipients of this program. For them, our grant assistance translated into increased physical and exercise therapy that increased the amount of return of function.
Our goal for 2019 is to double that amount which would require an investment of $60,000. We’re looking forward to expand our Remote Mobile Clinic to 2-3 destinations, bringing spinal cord injury medical expertise to rural areas currently under served. One of the major new initiatives we’ll be working on is sponsoring a symposium designed to elevate the knowledge and experience of healthcare professionals throughout Northern California as it relates to dealing with new cases of spinal cord injury. We’re also planning on upgrading the Care Packages we provide individuals with a new injury by including more tools and resources that can provide meaningful assistance, particularly to those with high-level injuries.
We’ll be publishing our Annual Report on Tuesday, Jan. 8th, 2019, followed by our 2019 Goals & Objectives a week later.
Thank you to our generous in-kind donors
Another one of the highlights of the evening were the 26 live and silent auction items, offering something for every taste. A major shout out goes to our emcee, Chris Wilder, who did a masterful job of running the live auctions. We are very grateful to the following individuals and organizations who donated auction items:
The 2019 Fundraising Party: when & where?
Krystina Jackson, Miss Wheelchair California, and Franklin Elieh, NorCal SCI co-founder
For our first event, we wanted it to be small and intimate and hence, Bramble & Biers provided the ideal opportunity and cost for us. It did limit as to how many guests we could have. The good news is that we plan on having more guests at next year’s fundraiser party, opening it up to those we couldn’t invite this year. At this time, we’re surveying a few sites that can hopefully accommodate 200-250 guests and we plan on reserving the ultimate site as soon as possible. We’ll notify you of the date so you can save it. So, stay tuned.
