Women’s Club uses lawn ornament to collect donations for local charities
Women’s Club uses lawn ornament to collect donations for local charities
Pink flamingoes have been invading front yards around Hollister for nearly a week as part of a Women’s Club of Hollister fundraising effort that launched on April 1.
One of the organizers of the project, Kim Kimber, said the group heard about the fundraiser from the Santa Cruz Women’s Club and thought it would be a fun way to earn money to support local charities.
“We started with club members,” Kimber said, of the first batches of plastic pink flamingoes that were put up in local yards over the weekend. “We picked some prominent people in the community that we thought would be receptive, such as the Sheriff and former council members – people like that.”
The fundraising part comes in when people call one of the 10 Women’s Club members involved to arrange for the removal of the flamingoes. The members will remove the flamingoes immediately for those who are less up for the game, but the goal is to collect donations for the removal service. People calling in to have them removed can pay $15 to offer up an address to have the flamingoes posted next. They can also make any size donation to the club they see fit. The money will be used by the Women’s Club to support various nonprofits in the community.
Kimber said the fundraiser started on April Fool’s Day and will end on tax day, April 15.
“We’ve already had some good turnover,” Kim
ber said, of Sunday calls to remove the yard ornaments. “We have a list (of addresses) and we are just waiting for the flamingoes to become available so we can move them.”
At the start of the fundraiser they were putting up 10 flamingoes in each targeted yard, though Kimber said the group was prepared to lower the number of flamingoes as the event continues in case some of them get damaged or lost. She said they notified the Hollister Police Department so that they would know about the traveling flock in case they received any calls or noticed them.
“It’s just fun,” Kimber said. “We don’t want anyone to get mad that we put flamingoes in the yard. … It’s just for fun.”
The Hollister Women’s Club is a group of local women committed to improving the community. Their fundraising efforts support such organizations as: Community Pantry, Emmaus house, San Benito County Historical Society, San Juan Bautista Historical Society, Small Steps, Friends of the San Benito Free Library, Hollister
Airshow, Comfort Care Backpacks, Holte Memorial Christmas dinner, and Girls Inc. They also award scholarships to local graduating seniors.
