It has always been very important to me to be involved in my neighbourhood. I’m the one who plans the holiday party with the neighbours, the summer street party and the girlfriend getaways. But this year my neighbours and I decided to take it a little further and do something special. We decided to support the Yard Sale for the Cure.
Yard Sale for the Cure is an organization that raises money for Breast Cancer research and treatment by holding a massive series of Yard Sales in selected neighbourhoods across Canada. My neighbours and I loved that idea. Not only did we have a ton of collective "stuff" to sell but we were supporting a cause close to all of our hearts. My bestfriend is a breast cancer survivor, my neighbour Shelly’s mom is a survivor, and 2 other neighbours were survivors themselves.
I can tell you, I have thrown many yard sales but there was something different about this one. People seemed much more willing to spend a little extra knowing that it was going to a good cause. We all enjoyed the purging of extra toys, books, and other household items but more than that we felt good about the $1150 our neighbourhood yard sale raised for The Cure.
Marnie is an urbanmoms.ca member and mom of 4.
Hi Marnie – my wife and I are the founders of Yard Sale for the Cure. Loved reading your piece here and REALLY appreciate people like you who are organizing group sales and making this thing a bigger and bigger success. Based on learning from last year, we’re creating a tool kit for people like you who want to promote the event to their street or neighbourhood. If you’d like more information on it, drop me a line at andrew.howard@rogers.com and we’ll send you more information about what comes in the kit (flyers, signs etc). I wonder if there is a way to ask the membership at UrbanMoms if they’d like to post something for everyone to be able to consider something similar in their neighbourhood. I’ll drop them a line too.
Rachael is now a three year survivor and our event mission statement is to have a world where our daughters never have to hear the words “You have breast cancer”. We’ve set ourselves up so that every dollar that is donated from a yard sale to our registered charity goes directly to the end recipients (sponsorship pays for our Admin and printing costs) – so growth is the key for us to be able to raise more. This past year we raised $150 000 and the goal for next year is $225 000. If we get to that level – we’ll be the #3 third party fundraiser for CBCF!!
Thanks again for joining us
What a great idea. Congratulations to you and your neighbours.