A Successful And Fashionable Fund Raiser

My first fashion show was a success! It was also so much fun and I am proud to include my work on this event in my public relations portfolio.

In less than a month, I organized a fund-raising donation drive and fashion show to benefit three local animal welfare agencies. In this time, I:

• Did all PR and publicity for the donation drive and fashion show, which included writing and distributing a press release and creating and distributing flyers to local businesses.
• Motivated coworkers to use the Rescues & Runways event to drive sales and donations in the store and throughout the community.
• Recruited and coordinated 16 volunteer models.
• Organized fashion show logistics.
• Solicited donations from local businesses to include in three silent auction baskets. I put together two myself, and one was donated by a community member.
  

  Standing with the overflowing donation bin. We collected over 200 pounds of pet food and supplies.

Successes:

• My press release was printed in the “Around Umpqua” section of Roseburg’s News-Review newspaper.
• The silent auction raised $112 for the three animal shelter partners.
• Received over 200 pounds of donated pet food and supplies.

Things I learned throughout the process:

• A fashion show is more work than it seems, especially in three weeks time! Although I willingly led my store in this project and went above and beyond the minimum expectations, allowing myself more time to organize and publicize the event may have reduced some stress and improved the outcome even more.
• People LOVE pets more than I thought: I was very pleasantly surprised by the generosity of pet-lovers out there. We received many last-minute donations and several huge bags of pet food. Moreover, many local businesses were happy to donate items for the silent auction baskets to benefit the animals.
• Finding models wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be: At first, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find enough models. However, after a while, I was on model overload (it seemed like everyone and their mom wanted to model)! If I ever organize another fashion show, I’ll know ahead of time how many models are necessary and how to effectively recruit them. Although 16 models was a lot (and therefore a lot of clothes and accessories to deal with), I felt it was a great number and allowed for the audience to see how many different styles are available at maurices and, most importantly, it gave the adoptable pets a lot of show time!

I’m so happy that Rescues & Runways event provided an outlet for me to use my PR skills at my part-time job.

You can view more  fashion show pics on my Flickr stream.

As I continue my full-time job hunt in the PR industry, I will continue to organize fund-raisers and community involvement initiatives for maurices. A couple ideas I have for the winter season include a coat and toy drive to benefit local welfare agencies, such as The Salvation Army. I’m very excited to continue to help increase Roseburg maurices’ presence in the community as a leading fashion retailer that truly cares about its customers and community.