Bid on great items online and help the team keep rowing safely!
Saline Rowing’s primary fundraiser every year is the Great Gatsby Dinner and Auction, usually held at a local Saline restaurant. If you’ve participated, you know it’s a lot of fun. But honestly, we mostly break even on the ticket sales. The fundraising that keeps the team going is primarily from the silent auction held during the party. This year we had to cancel the dinner, but we can move the auction online.
We have a long list of items for auction that have been donated to Saline Rowing by our generous community sponsors. You can bid on these items online, and likely get them for less than their market price while also supporting an amazing athletic activity. The auction runs for one week, ending the night of Sunday, July 19. You can bid at Salinerowing.org.
In addition to bidding in the online auction, you can also:
- Purchase gift cards. The team has collected around 50 gift cards (valued between $20-$50) from many area businesses. Families can purchase as many ‘pre-wrapped’ gift cards as you’d like for $20 each. You’ll be able to pick them out of a hat and be guaranteed of at least recouping your investment.
- Participate in a raffle for a $250 Lewis Jewelers gift certificate. The team will sell a maximum of 20 raffle tickets at $25 each and hold a drawing for the gift card winner on Monday, July 20.
- Purchase a customized hand-painted Saline Rowing oar print (roughly 10.5 x 19.5 inches) from Heidi Pfannes for $50. The team can purchase as many as we’d like; and a portion of each print sold will be generously donated back to the team from Heidi Pfannes.
- Simply donate to the team. Every year, people who are unable to attend the Gatsby auction simply make a donation, and we appreciate it. You can still do that online!
The Great Gatsby Auction is adapting, and so is Saline Rowing
If you have a Saline rower in the family, you probably know that our coaches have adapted our rowing program for safety during the pandemic. In addition to social distancing, wearing masks, and staying outdoors whenever possible, the rowers are now exclusively rowing in “singles”, with one person per boat. In addition to safety, it allows each rower to learn to balance, steer, and power a boat by themselves. When we can safely race our larger boats of 2, 4, and 8 rowers again, it will mean that each team member is more effective in getting maximum results. Saline Rowing can actually come out of COVID better than before.
The downside? We need more single-seat boats, and they cost money! So this year’s fundraiser is as important as ever.
We hope you’ll take a look at what’s available and bid at our auction at:
https://salinerowing.org/saline-rowing-summer-auction/