The 37th annual Communithon event was termed “a great start” towards achieving their fundraising goal, hitting just under $70,000 when they went off the air at 11 p.m. on Friday at the Cugnet Centre.
The fundraiser goal is $140,000 by the year’s end for the United Way’s 13 member agencies, said Communithon chair and United Way president Sabrina Kraft, and they know there are more funds to come in that will help them achieve that goal.
The Prairie Sky Co-op’s “Fuel Good Day” brought in funds for both the United Way and the Humane Society, and those funds are yet to come in for the United Way to be added to the total.
In addition, Kraft noted that donations from businesses that are participating in payroll deductions, as a way for employees to donate to the United Way, have until the end of 2018 to remit those deductions. Examples of companies that are using this method include SaskEnergy and the Weyburn Police Association.
In addition, donations made by businesses through United Way Canada will come back to the Weyburn United Way by the end of the year.
The $70,000 total includes the proceeds of the Knights of Columbus perogy-sausage supper at McKenna Hall on Friday, and the proceeds of the Westjet “Gift of Flight” raffle, which was drawn on Friday evening after ticket sales were closed. The flight package was won by Eileen Bouchard of Radville.
“We had a lot of great entertainment throughout the day, and we stayed pretty much on schedule, with only a couple of glitches. We also had great volunteers who worked behind the scenes backstage or running the cameras, who produced a quality show for us,” said Kraft.
The Weyburn United Way will hold a meeting on Thursday, Nov. 1, to go over how Communithon went this year, and they welcome anyone to attend if they have ideas on how to improve the event for next year, or suggestions on what they would like to change.
The meeting will be held at 4 p.m. at the Canadian Mental Health building in Weyburn, at 404 Ashford Street.
The first-ever “Minute to Win It” challenge had two enthusiastic teams go head-to-head with a series of fun challenges, including Team Credit Union and the Superhero team, featuring the three Communithon superheroes, Jayda Cameron, Stephanie Butz and Dalton Chicoine and a friend, Keely O’Neill.
In the end, Team CU won the trophy and bragging rights for the year, “and they will be encouraging other businesses to take them down next year,” said Kraft.
She was also happy to see that members of the Communithon committee took on new roles this year as they helped out at the event.
The three superheroes were kept busy for the 15-hour fundraiser, said Kraft.
“They definitely got a taste of everything, from helping out backstage to announcing, and interacting with the school kids. Hopefully they’ll spread the word about how much fun it was so we can get some great applications in for next year’s superheroes,” she said.
The United Way welcomes any donations from people who were unable to give on Friday and would still like to support their member agencies. The donations can be made online using Paypal, on the United Way’s website, or donations can be mailed to Box 608 in Weyburn. If anyone is unsure about where to submit a donation, they can also contact Kraft and she will direct the donations to the right place.
