Convincing people to part with their hard-earned cash is never easy. Throw in memories of recession and an economic outlook that is bleaker than Bronte moorland, and the task looks near insurmountable. Nevertheless, when it comes to helping fund outrageous stunts, people are seemingly happy to dip into their current accounts, especially when those stunts are for the greater good of charity.
With the competition for wackiest idea growing fiercer by the year, fundraisers are creating a legacy of ideas that will inspire others for a long time yet.

Abseiling in suit of armour
A swordmaker from England, Jez Menis, abseiled down Britain’s highest waterfall clad in a full suit of armour in March 2010 in order to raise money for Kidney Research UK. Menis made the suit in question himself, basing the design on plate armor worn during the War of the Roses era. Menis descended the 220ft Canonteign Falls after successfully raising more than $1,600 in sponsorship.

Riding a Penny Farthing across Australia
In 2004, Lloyd Scott rode a Penny Farthing across Australia, from Perth, across the Nullarbor Plain and the Great Dividing Range, and down to Sydney. ‘After the first couple of days my support team and I were all wondering how the hell I was going to do it,’ recalls Scott. ‘The temperature reached 40°C, the terrain was rough and the Victorian bike had no suspension. It was tough but I took it day by day and after 50 days completed it.’ The stunt raised more than £500,000 for the Clic charity.

Marathon in deep-sea diving suit
Deep-sea diving suits of the old-school weigh in excess of 180lb. In 2002, Lloyd Scott put one on (including helmet) to ‘run’ the London Marathon. The 26 mile slog took Scott five days. The diving suit – a 1940 Russian 3-bolt model – now resides in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London.

Skateboarding across Australia
Over 105 days in 2006, Dave Cornthwaite skateboarded 5823km from Perth to Brisbane, averaging approximately 60km per day. The feat secured Cornthwaite a place in the Guinness World Record for the longest distance travelled by skateboard and earned him the nickname of the ‘Mad Pom’. Most importantly, it raised more than $32,000 for three charities including Sailability Australia. ‘It’s an unusual idea,’ Cornthwaite said at the time, ‘but the Australian people see this normal bloke like me pushing myself to the limit for good causes and they’ve run with it.’

Living with spiders
Nick Le Souef, who lives in Melbourne, Australia, spent three weeks living, eating and sleeping in a tiny shop window with just 400 deadly spiders for company. In the process, Le Souef raised more than $16,000 for children’s charity, Variety.

Climbing blind
In May 2001, American Erik Weihenmayer became the first blind man to reach the top of Mount Everest, raising thousands of pounds for blind charities by doing so.

Crossing Japan on stilts
Married couple Mick and Miki Tan, walked the entire length of Japan on stilts during 2009. The journey, which they described as ‘one year, two stilts, 3000km’ was officially known as the Pongo Hogo Hogo Challenge and carried out to raise money for the Borneo Orangutan Survival Fund. The couple carried their food, water, tents and clothes themselves and stopped at every school on the route to help raise awareness of the plight of the orangutans in the dwindling rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra.

Old-age abseiling
When the then 84-year-old Molli Turner abseiled off the 175ft ICL tower in Gorton, Manchester in fancy dress, she earned herself a place in the Guinness Book of Records. Turner, now 91, has lived though breast and throat cancer and raised $320,000 for St Ann’s Hospice. Her efforts earned her an MBE in 2001.

The next big thing
While people undoubtedly love originality, they also love things that amuse them or make them think. Avoid costumes or premises that are negative, and especially those designed to make people feel guilty.
Also bear in mind the setting for the charitable event as a lot of money can potentially be raised en-route. According to the 2010 World Giving Index, the countries where citizens are most likely to give to charitable causes are, in descending order of altruism, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada, Switzerland, United States, Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

Public schools, hit by budget cuts, drops in donations and new fundraising guidelines, are capitalizing on the culinary craze. Mobile eateries park at campuses, dispensing meals to the hungry and money to cash-strapped facilities.

Diners come to Whitney High School in Cerritos for a food truck night that is helping the school raise money for a new multimedia room. Area high schools are starting to capitalize on the culinary craze by inviting trucks to campus and charging them a fee or asking for a donation. (Lawrence K. Ho, Los Angeles Times / October 17, 2011)

Photos: Food truck culture
Angel Jennings, Los Angeles Times
October 23, 2011
Echo Lau drove to Whitney High School on a recent Monday evening to pick up her kids. She left with dinner.

The student parking lot at the Cerritos campus is transformed every week into a congested food truck stop as eight mobile eateries attract the business of loyal followers, parents and students.

But this isn’t a typical stop for these catering trucks; this is a school fundraiser, in which a portion of the proceeds go directly to Whitney to help pay for a new multi-media center.

Outdoor food courts are popping up in the parking lots of at least a dozen high schools across Southern California with more on the way. Financially strapped public schools — hit hard by budget cuts, new fundraising guidelines, and fewer donors — have found a way to capitalize on the food truck craze.

Schools typically earn up to $50 per food truck nightly. It’s small change that quickly adds up, said Bryan Glonchak, assistant principal at Whitney. Since school opened, Whitney has made a total of $2,000 on the fund-raiser.

In most cases, schools host weekly food truck events, in which up to 10 vendors gather at dinnertime. Facebook and Twitter help spread the word.

The money is then used to fund scholarships, pay for equipment and school projects.

Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California sued the state for allowing school districts to charge students for books, uniforms and other basic supplies. A settlement agreement established protections against the fees but it also mandated that schools can no longer require students to fundraise.

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill two weeks ago that would have created a law based on the settlement; the ACLU has refiled the case.

Prior to the December settlement, some schools had not only required student fundraising but set quotas for those who participated in extracurricular activities.

At Fullerton Union High School, football players had to come up with $300 through fundraising and parents’ contributions. But in May, the assistant principal told faculty members they could no longer ask for students’ time or money.

Since then, Fullerton has hosted its own food truck fundraiser to make up the difference. But the Orange County school put its own spin on the event.

On a recent Saturday, 22 food trucks circled the football field under high-voltage floodlights as music blared in the speakers that normally carry the voices of sports announcers. More than 1,000 residents, students and food truck followers sat on the field on blankets, in lawn chairs and around folded dinner tables.

Fullerton hosts events like this every six weeks. Instead of charging the food trucks a set fee, the school asks the owners to donate what they want. The school receives about $100 to $150 per truck.

So far Fullerton has held four fundraisers and raised $13,000 — more than half the cost of uniforms for the varsity football team.

Cerritos High School has raised $3,000 since it held its first food truck fundraiser on a Thursday night in July. The money collected goes to the athletic program, and helps pay for field equipment and transportation to the games.

At Taft High School in Woodland Hills, the proceeds from the food trucks go toward college scholarships. Last year, a number of seniors received awards with the $5,000 raised at the events. In the past, community sponsors and alumni donated the money, but as the economy weakened, Taft noticed a decrease in charitable giving.

Other schools hope to host similar fundraisers, said Christian Murcia, the owner of the Crepes Bonaparte food truck. Murcia, the liaison between the schools and the catering trucks, said he receives calls weekly asking him to host a food truck night. He adds the schools’ names to a growing list.

He wants to make sure he doesn’t overextend his team or oversaturate the market. But he does acknowledge the benefits of being partners with high schools.

“Brick and mortar restaurants and shopping centers don’t want us parking on the streets stealing business away from them,” Murcia said. “This keeps us out of trouble and allows us give back to the community.”

Justin Moore-Brown, who works at Chunk-n-Chip Cookies, a food truck where customers design their own ice cream sandwiches, said: “It’s a win-win situation for us both. There is a profit sharing system among the trucks, and the high schools come with an automatic base of kids and families.”

At Whitney High School, as night crept over the parking lot, customers swarmed closer under the lights of the food trucks.

Behind the Ragin Cajun truck, Paul Reyes of Anaheim, still dressed in blue hospital scrubs, turned the trunk of his Subaru sedan into a makeshift dinner table. The 26-year-old respiratory therapist had just ended a 12-hour shift at Long Beach Memorial Hospital, but still made the hour and a half drive to Whitney for a Korean barbecue roll from Let’s Roll It.

Reyes convinced his relatives to meet him at the food truck stop. After he finished his first round, he took the last $29 out of his pockets and headed back to his favorite truck. To Reyes, it’s money well spent.

For the Lau family, the trucks are a weekly tradition that they’ve only missed once.

“I don’t need to cook today” or any other Monday night, said Lau, a 47-year old Norwalk resident, in between bites of a twisted potato-on-a-stick from Tornado Potato. “And [this event] is supporting the school.”

angel.jennings@latimes.com

After 22 years of work, filmmaker Jennifer Fox found that she had a completed film with no way to pay the bills and fund the distribution. With no hope left, she reluntantly turned to Kickstarter to ask for help (read more details of her story here). Future of Film wanted to tell more of her inspiring story, which came with some very useful and inspirational advice. Below are 10 things she learned while trying to reach a six-figure funding goal on Kickstarter.
By Jennifer Fox

1. Reach Out to Family and Friends
Unlike what many will tell you, I must say that for me family (and friends) are more about getting emotional support than money. It is very dicey to ask people you know and love to give you their hard earned funds. I had some friends tell me that they felt offended that I was emailing them about our campaign. Discussing this with them led to some very interesting insights about why I feel this is a democratic and legitimate way to support the arts. But I am not here to proselytize. I immediately backed off. In a way what they are saying is true: they don’t ask me to fund their passion, why should I ask them to fund mine? However, that’s not exactly how I see it: I believe that the film project, My Reincarnation, has a greater good for humanity and is a contribution to people’s lives. Hence, it must be seen and is worth funding.

2. Build a Team
Filmmaking is a collaborative experience, but so is fundraising. It takes a lot of brainstorming and thinking out of the box. It takes multiple skills that one person rarely has all of. Without a team you just can’t get the traction and the reach into the world. But also it helps with the fear factor. I don’t know about you, but this kind of public fundraising scares the sh*t out of me. My team kept me from losing it. Having a team is also essential for Tip #3.

3. Brainstorm the Campaign as a Rollout with Different Phases
Our team, Katherine Nolfi, Lisa Duva, Stefanie Diaz and myself, discussed how the campaign would start and how we would keep rolling out new facets over time. This included building email lists, adding new incentives, and creating regular new videos for our website, Facebook and Twitter that could be linked with our consistent updates on Kickstarter.

We saw our campaign as having three initiatives: the web campaign; seeking out and approaching larger private donors to become Producers; and setting up “Sneak Preview Benefit Screenings” in key locations. The screenings were part of our plan because we had a unique problem: we were fundraising for a film that was technically finished, but that no one had seen. We hypothesized that people might need to see the finished film to give it money. In the end, festivals also helped on this account. But I also learned that the film’s trailer was often enough for people…

4. Make a Good Trailer
Of course “make a great trailer” is common wisdom for any kind of film fundraising. However, My Reincarnation was such a difficult film that I didn’t edit a trailer during the fundraising process. When I looked for funds, I always showed edited scenes assembled in a half-hour or hour format (which is probably why we failed miserably much of the time). Once we finally cut the trailer, right before launching at festivals, it was rather easy to do because the story arc was so clear. Now I’ve been told by some people that they cry when they watch our trailer. It has helped many people to make a donation when they haven’t seen the film yet.

5. Incentives
Since you can’t really put many images on your own Kickstarter page, Stefanie created a full brochure of pictures of the Kickstarter incentives on our My Reincarnation website so people could see what they were getting. She used the PBS pledge images as her model. We gathered a mixture of incentives, some Buddhist oriented and some film community oriented. One thing that we did very early on, even before the Kickstarter campaign began, was to offer a Limited Special Edition Pre-Release DVD for sale on our website at a very high price: $108. We started to sell this a good six months before our Kickstarter campaign to help keep our office running during the festival release. When we put up the campaign, we decided to offer the DVD in two ways: the Commercial DVD in 2012 at $25 and the Limited Special Edition Pre-Release DVD in September 2011 at $108. This was our most successful incentive.

For higher priced items, I raided anything I could find in my home: there are two of my own museum quality paintings by a very well known Buddhist Painter and a beautiful antique Tibetan chest that my parents gave me. I even put up a limited edition watch I received from being on the Zurich Film Festival jury last year. Basically nothing I own was off limits. It’s been a great Buddhist teaching to struggle with–and let go of–my attachment to my objects (that chest is one of my favorite possessions)!

6. Write, Write, And Write
Early on in the process, I would send my eblasts to my team to edit. We thought one page, max–so they cut and cut (my writing style can be a bit longwinded). Then we noticed that we were receiving the most donations following longer, more personal messages. They received overwhelmingly positive feedback. What at first seemed like a weakness, turned out to be one of our strongest tools. Writing became fun. As some of you may know, being on the road with a film can be the one of the most uncreative jobs one does over the course of film. But suddenly, writing these weekly Kickstarter updates and email blasts became a creative outlet for me.

7. Reach out to Appropriate Partners to Help Blast for your Campaign / Befriend the Tastemakers
The first tier we reached out to were listserves connected to the students of the film’s protagonist, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu. Rinpoche has centers around the world, so we regularly wrote new, special updates to be blasted to their membership. These letters were less chatty than the ones I send to the general mailing list or post for our Kickstarter patrons.

We started a web series called Outtakes From the Film (O.F.F.) that we edit and post online and in our Buddhist eblasts to give those communities new video to enjoy, and entice them to become more involved with the project. These videos have helped assuage Buddhist students around the world, who are anxiously waiting to see My Reincarnation and are not so happy that they have to wait for the distribution rollout. The other thing we did–but could only do with the Sneak Preview NYC Fundraising screening–was offer incentives to appropriate organizations to blast their membership on behalf of our campaign. We gave the heads of each organization a free ticket to the screening in exchange for sending out an announcement. And of course, this laid the groundwork for establishing partners and building an audience for the film down the line.

8. Use Web 2.0: Facebook, Twitter, Bloggers…
This is absolutely obvious in today’s world. We posted updates on social networking sites many times a week. We worked hard to build up our Facebook and Twitter pages daily. We also posted on other organizations’ and individuals’ pages and walls – searching for related topics like “Buddhism,” “Tibet,” “Spirituality,” “Religion,” and “Yoga” – with information about the Kickstarter campaign, new videos, incentives and screenings.

9. Blast Often, Regularly, and Best at the Beginning of the Week
Get those eblasts out on Monday or Tuesday. Later in the week they get lost in people’s over-loaded inboxes. It’s important to keep up the pressure. It’s hard to know what the “tipping point” is for someone to make a donation. It can be the first letter or the twentieth letter that brings them over to the Kickstarter site.

10. Go Beyond Your Limits
Every step of the way on this journey, I had to go beyond my comfort zone to publicly ask for money: on the web, in emails, in person, on stage – over and over again. At every point, I had to push through my reticence, fear and a general “I just don’t want to do it again!” attitude. Facing these inner demons is necessary if you are going do this type of campaign. Believe me, crowd-funding certainly pushes those buttons, but it also requires you to let go and not listen to your ego so much.

My motto is, “Never say die!” Despite years of experience facing rejection, it can still be hard to pick yourself up each time. Somehow we have to find a way not to take rejection personally and move on. Of course, with some potential funders, you just have to give up, back off, and try somewhere else. A person who says no today may still say yes tomorrow. And if you give them new evidence to change their mind, they often do.

All of Jennifer Fox’s helpful tips were posted originally on Hope for Film.

Stay tuned for her insights on how to round off a successful campaign.

Jennifer Fox is an award-winning filmmaker and educator known for her ground-breaking features and series, including Beirut: The Last Home Movie, An American Love Story, Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman and My Reincarnation. She recently co-wrote the half hour television pilot The Good Egg, and is developing the feature script The Horse’s Tale. She has executive produced many films, including Love & Diane and On the Ropes.

The Tribeca Future of Film blog is a place where leading filmmakers and experts within the film industry share their thoughts on film, technology and the future of media.

Follow Tribeca Film on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TribecaFilm

by Mike Wehner

While the United States continues to debate over government-funded healthcare, Americans with mounting medical bills sometimes have nowhere to turn. Many people without health insurance — and even some who are fortunate enough to have it — find themselves struggling to make payments or sometimes go without care for fear of debt later on. A new website called GiveForward is targeted at these very individuals and allows them to start personal fundraisers and rely on the generosity of others for financial assistance.

Those going through tough times can create a GiveForward page detailing their financial standing and current medical situation. As funds are raised, most organizers provide updates as to the status of themselves or their loved one currently undergoing or awaiting treatment. You can even start a donation drive for pet medical expenses, and as anyone who has had a sick dog or cat can attest, vet bills are no small feat to overcome.

By promoting a fundraiser though social networks like Twitter and Facebook, organizers can raise awareness of their pressing medical crisis, and provide potential donors a safe and secure way to help out. Donors can keep their information private, or choose to share it with the beneficiary of the fundraiser. After each fundraiser is completed, GiveForward sends a check for the donation total (less a 7% cut to keep the site up and running) to the beneficiary.

In total, GiveForward has already helped raise over $5.4 million for medical expenses and related causes. Fundraisers of $10,000 are commonplace, and some have even been able to raise as much as $88,000 for life-saving procedures. The site relies on the same kind of generosity that fuels donation sites like Kickstarter — which helps raise funds for various business startups and projects — only in this case, instead of donating cash to a new website or invisible art museum, you could help save a human life.

By SALLY YORK, Argus-Press Staff Writer

On Wednesday morning at the Senior Center in Edgewater, the Annapolis SPCA held an event to try to connect senior citizens in the area with older pets, which are sometimes difficult to adopt. The event, “Seniors for Seniors,” was accompanied by a bake sale, raffle and other fundraisers. All of the money from the event went to the SPCA in Annapolis.

According to the Humane Society, older pets have several advantages, including:

• Older pets have great manners, mature personalities and quieter habits.
• Older pets are very loving, affectionate and devoted companions.
• Older pets are usually housebroken and less likely to chew, scratch and damage possessions.
• Older pets are focused to learn and most often, know basic commands.

In addition, some studies show that people who live alone can gain physical and emotional benefits from having a pet, including lower blood pressure, improved social skills, an increase in physical activity and reduced stress.

The SPCA brought four dogs and four cats to the event. One of the dogs was adopted, and there was definite interest in the others. Each adoptee has to undergo a background check in order to get a pet from the SPCA.

There were several tables for other fundraisers. One was run by Monica Hardesty of Severn, who has a “stuffed pet adoption” business, wherein people buy a stuffed pet for $5 and the money goes to charity.

“I pick them up for $1 or 50 cents at yard sales, clean them up and resell them. We give the money to SPCA,” Hardesty said.

Mindy Nelson ran a booth that was selling Macys August 27 “Shop for a Cause” coupons. Customers get 25 percent off and a portion of the shopping proceeds go to charity, in this case the SPCA. The coupons will be available for sale at the SPCA on Bay Ridge Road until August 27.

There was a 50-50 raffle, a free lunch, a bake sale, a silent auction and doorprizes for the seniors in attendance.

Extortion never looked this flamboyant.

A toilet, spray-painted pink and decorated with flowers, has recently been making the rounds in front yards across Nevada County.

Homeowners who find the porcelain throne stuck in their yard can choose to pay $10 to have the toilet removed to a friend’s lawn, and an additional $5 to make sure it never appears on their property again.

The gimmick is the design of Bear River sophomore Emily Dyer, a 15-year-old south county resident.

She is participating in a hunger fundraiser sponsored by the youth group at her church, Sierra Presbyterian. She got the toilet from Habitat for Humanity and spray-painted it bright pink.

Dyer’s father transports the toilet from location to location, and so far she’s estimated the plan has raised more than $1,200 since they began in May.

Proceeds from the toilet removal service (victims can opt out if they don’t want to play along) go to an organization called World Vision, which feeds starving children in Africa.

“Hopefully, we’ll keep it going until the end of summer,” said Dyer.

Students in the youth group have been working on a hunger initiative recently, which included a 30-hour fast in order to better understand the effects of hunger, she said.

You can contact the church to find out how to help at (530) 265-3291.

Source: http://www.theunion.com/article/20110701/NEWS/110639974/1001&parentprofile=1053

Margaret Watson

Students were arrested by DPS as part of Jail and Bail, a prank Relay for Life used to raise money for the American Cancer Society.

“I answered the door in my bathrobe,” Smith said. “They told me I had to get dressed because they had to take me away.”

Luckily for Smith, he wasn’t really arrested. He was just a target of Jail and Bail, one of the latest pranks carried out by Brown’s Relay for Life committee, which organizes an overnight walk each year to raise money and awareness for the American Cancer Society.

Jail and Bail “is an event where, if you give us five dollars and give us the location of a friend at some point on Saturday, we will have a DPS officer go and arrest them,” said Margaret Watson ’11, co-chair of Brown’s Relay For Life committee and a Herald senior business associate.

DPS officers presented all detainees with a warrant for their arrest and brought some to a “jail” in Wilson Hall 205, Watson said, where they had mug shots taken while wearing handcuffs. Other captives were released on the site of their arrest, after posting a $2 bail.

The committee decided to promote awareness for Relay for Life across campus through unusual fundraisers, as a sort of “publicity stunt,” Watson said.

“Part of the idea behind doing these fundraisers is to get the word out for Relay for Life and make sure people are signing up for teams,” she said.

The officers explained to the targets of Jail and Bail that they were not really under arrest, but a few people “got really scared,” Watson said. “Once we explained everything, they were fine, though.”

Akira Rattenbury, who was visiting friends at Brown, witnessed the arrest of his friend Adam Epstein ’09 and was “definitely scared” by the prank.

“We had hosted a party the night before, and I was lying on the couch, in and out of sleep, and I woke up and looked up to see police out the window,” Rattenbury said. “I just thought, ‘Uh oh. What did we do last night?’”

According to Campus Police Officer Elayna Boucher and Security Officer Jarret D’Amato, targets of the prank were all “good sports,” but some were disconcerted at first.

The most disoriented were “the ones who had a long night last night,” D’Amato said. “They look at the arrest warrant and say, ‘Okay, I’m still confused.’”

Some targets of the Jail and Bail prank were not scared upon arrest, because they were aware of the fundraising effort.

When Ethan Risom ’10 was arrested in his room in New Dorm, he said he was a “little confused at first,” but, he added, “One of my friends from Relay for Life was with (the DPS officers), so I figured it out pretty quickly.”

Some victims of the prank decided to get even with their friends by issuing a “counter-warrant,” Watson said. She added that, in total, DPS officers “arrested” about 30 people Saturday.

Brown’s Relay for Life committee also organized another “out of the box” fundraiser last week, Watson said, when it “chicken cooped” 16 rooms on campus.

The committee thought it would be “funny and hilarious” to charge students $5 to cover the doors to their friends’ rooms in duct tape, Watson said.

“People got really excited about it,” Watson said. “We had a table in the mail room, and people signed up.”

Roxanne Knapp ’11, one of the targets of the chicken cooping prank, said she was alarmed when she heard strange noises outside her door late at night.

“I heard creepy ripping noises, and we’ve had people try to get in our door before drunkenly, so I was really creeped out,” Knapp said.

She was relieved when she opened her door and found members of the Relay for Life committee covering her door frame in tape.

When she woke up the next day, Knapp had to “army crawl” under her tape-covered doorway to leave her room, she said.

The committee’s co-chairs – Watson, Greg Young ’11 and Dominique Ferraro ’11 – came up with their “crazy fundraising ideas” at a Relay for Life summit last November, Watson said. At the convention, the committee learned that the chicken cooping and Jail and Bail are common fundraisers for other Relay for Life chapters.

Participants in the relay, set to take place April 10 from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., form 8- to 15-person teams, which then collect donations.

Past Relay for Life events at Brown have raised over $100,000, Watson said.

Many of life’s little wrinkles can be rolled out along with a pie crust.

Just ask Phyllis Straut, the Women’s Association president at Harrisena Community Church in Queensbury, who seems to have been cast in the role of chief crust maker for the summer pie sale.

“We definitely get to know each other better over pie making. We share things about our kids or our grandkids. Sometimes we even discuss church events,” Straut said. “We’ll talk about Obama or the terrible floods. We just share.”

The annual pie sale, held every Independence Day weekend at the Cleverdale Country Store, is not only a chief fundraiser but also an opportunity for the ladies of the congregation to bond over a few simple ingredients.

The pie sale cements long-time relationships and helps to form new ones.

“You go to church, you sit in your pew, you go through the service. You have coffee hour, but you don’t have the expansion of seeing everybody. Here in the kitchen, it’s small enough that you can talk around and share. It’s been fun,” Straut said.

People can sometimes identify who made a certain pie just by looking at the style of the crust, according to Straut, since each woman brings to the table her own skills passed down from mothers and grandmothers.

On a summer morning near the July 4 holiday, the pie-baking brigade went into action in the church’s kitchen layering pans with pie crust and filling.

Come early afternoon, the baked, cooled pies were boxed and ready to be transported early the next morning.

The $15 pies with fillings of berry, cherry, pecan, apple and pumpkin are sold on a first-come, first-serve basis and are the “upper crust” among a variety of other baked goods.

Straut said she always sends happy buyers off with the instruction to pop the pie in the oven for 5 to 7 minutes to crisp the crust so it tastes fresh.

The Harrisena church July bake sale has been around for many years and was a staple under the leadership of former Women’s Association President Toni Higgins, who died a few years ago. Pies have become the main focus since Straut took over.

“They’re the best sellers. People are not apt to make them themselves,” she said.

The lucrative fundraiser brings in about $800, with the money going toward emergencies in the church.

“Like all other organizations that I have seen, the churches are hurting financially. People aren’t able to keep their pledges up, and this old church is needing repairs. The costly things we at least help with,” she said.

The pie bakers can show off their culinary talent at more than just the Independence Day weekend event, however.

During the third week of July, they contribute their favorite recipes to the summer barbecue, and at Thanksgiving and Christmas, the Women’s Association takes advance orders for pies.

Straut said the group has even begun buying pie tins and boxes for their sales, so the goods are uniform in size and have a professional flair.

Of course, the end result is just as satisfying as a slice of pie a la mode.

“It’s exciting to us to see the excitement in the customer’s face – ‘Oh, a homemade pie!’ – and their willingness to support us,” Straut said. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a complaint.”

Read more: http://poststar.com/lifestyles/article_73585f84-a1db-11e0-aa7a-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1QgzCDykt