Be a Rock 2024
"Be a Rock in a Child’s Life” is the Faithful Friends’ main annual fundraiser that, these last three years, has brought together between 110-180 community members and leaders from Portland-based churches, businesses, and non-profits.
We, “once again”, returned to Bridgetown Church in NE PDX, where we brought back many favorites from previous years: a heavy hors d’oeuvres buffet from Elephants Deli, an open bar with wine donated by Stoller and Birch Community Services and beer from Wildwood Taphouse.
With doors opening at 6pm, guests arrived to a registration table staffed with amazing volunteers from Birch Community Services, Friends of the Children and CAIRO, who kept the lines moving quickly. Bidder cards were given to each guest so they could easily participate in the evening’s fundraising activities, which included:
On-site silent auction with 9 packages for sale
Live auction featuring a stocked wine fridge as well as several consignment trips
Wine purchases from Stoller (50/50 profit split)
Raffle tickets for a $500 Amazon gift card
“Golden ticket” raffle for a trip to Mexico or Hawaii
Paddle raise
“Last hero standing” game with a free trip giveaway
As the non-experts, we are always happy to bring in the entertaining auctioneer Patrick Siver to guide us every step of the way as we prepared and launched our week-long online auction.
We were excited to bring in nearly $14,000 from the online auction. Our silent auction raised around $2500.
Our local musical entertainment was provided by the talented husband and wife duo, Benjamin and Heidi-Beth Sadler of Chasing Ebenezer. Be sure to check their events calendar for more chances to catch them live around town and beyond.
We love building into our evening the chance to catch up and mingle with friends old or new. With 20+ tables, each including 8 seats, table hosts could choose to donate $1000 and invite friends, family or colleagues. Several churches, local companies and others stepped up to sponsor at a higher level. We sat around 110 guests.
After food, drinks and mingling, our program got underway with several opportunities to give towards the mission of Faithful Friends. This year our match video featured a friendship now 9+ years in the making: Rachael & Biana!
Executive Director Al Nodarse also gave an update on some of what we’ve been up to at Faithful Friends. Al is passionate about mentoring and it clearly shows! Some of our new initiatives he mentions include Motoring for Mentors and Hard Hat Tours. Video links included below for more context.
The program got underway with a few words from Pastor John C Hughes (Door of Hope SE) and an opening prayer from Pastor Heather Hellman of Multnomah Presbyterian. As live auction packages were auctioned off, Maddie joined Patrick and Al on stage to work her magic by describing some of the fun trips on offer (to Huntington Beach, Hawaii, Mexico and Italy). Maddie is a former mentee and budding entertainer who is now 17.
It was truly a magical evening that resulted in $130k raised. We are so grateful for the participation from so many! If you were unable to participate, please consider donating now. Just click the button below and choose the campaign “2024 Be a Rock in a Child’s Life”, or consider joining our monthly giving program, The Giving Crew, to help sustain us throughout the year.
If you missed Be a Rock this year, we hope you can enjoy setting aside some time to watch the full program below…
We want to sincerely thank our many volunteers who showed up to make our event a success! While we don’t have photos of many, we do have a few to share. Many worked behind the scenes after the program ended. We also want to thank our media crew: Michaela Drew taking photos and Jeremy Landes doing video.
We also want to thank our many in-kind donors! See the complete list here.
