Tag Archives: Fundraising

Heifer Around the Web: Japanese Students Hold Bunkasai Festival to Raise Funds

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Every Sunday we will highlight some of the people who are funding our work creatively or helping us spread the word of our mission online. If you spot Heifer International while you’re surfing the web or know of a fun or creative fundraising effort, please share it with us here in the comments.

You’ll want to check out these blog posts we spotted this week: 

We were honored to be included in ABC News blogger Lauren Torrisi’s blog post, Fight Hunger With These 5 Charities.

Abby Van Derstuyf, on right, competes with Brooke Isaacs during a chop stick race.

Abby Van Derstuyf, on right, competes with Brooke Isaacs during a chop stick race at a Bunkasai festival. (Photo courtesy of Oberserver & Eccentric)

Roby Brock, of TalkBusiness.net, writes about several Heifer enthusiasts who put the “fun” in fundraising: an 8-year-old creating and selling greeting cards, a group jigsaw puzzle, Jog for a Hog, Big Moo Canoe, as well as some celebrities helping to bring in cash for our projects around the world.

From daily Lenten activities to a Japanese festival and a man dressed up as a cow, the entertainingly unique fund-raisers keep coming:

The JBAB Chapel Protestant Community Challenge hoped to collect $5,000 for one Gift Ark during Lent. “Ark Banks” were given out along with calendars daily activities ideas for adding to the bank. Each week, a different animal was featured, along with an explanation about how the animal could help a family become self-sufficient. The challenge ended with the $7,779 in donations.

North Farmington High School Japanese language students held their first Bunkasai festivallast week, offering those attending everything from rice balls to origami lessons. The event raised $700 for Heifer International and provided fun and learning for students and those attending.

Holy Cow! I was especially interested in this story about a school principal wearing a cow suit after his students fundraiser for Heifer! The school is Salem Lutheran, which is about two miles from my pre-Arkansas home in Affton, Mo.

If you know of any unique fund-raising events or ideas, let us know so we can share them in a future post!

Heifer Around the Web: Spring Break Magic at Heifer Ranch

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Every Sunday we will highlight some of the people who are funding our work creatively or helping us spread the word of our mission online. If you spot Heifer International while you’re surfing the web or know of a fun or creative fundraising effort, please share it with us here in the comments!

Our supporters can get quite creative and fun in their efforts to raise money for our projects around the world. Here are a few I spotted this week:

Preparations are being made for the 4th Annual Students of Heidi Mayo Art Exhibit, along with a silent auction to benefit one of our projects!

Mathew Chambers writes about his recent spring break trip (which included an overnight in the Global Village) to Heifer Ranch and “the magic that occurs,” on Georgia Southern University’s Center for Entrepreneurial Learning and Leadership website.

Spreading our message is just as important, so I’d like to bring attention to the following blogs that have featured Heifer International:

Giulia Geranium
Guila took the time to share information about our Hatch Hope campaign going on now.

She Knows Real Moms Guide
This blogger shares bits from her interview with Mary Steenburgen, a longtime Heifer supporter.

And finally, we’d like to congratulate Noland Hoshino, who recently won an Alumni Community Service Award for his efforts with the web and social media for the Portland chapter of Heifer International.

New Match Brings Hope to Vietnam

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Half of farmers in the Mekong Delta Region of Vietnam live on less than $1 a day. The families in this area struggle with limited land for production, illiteracy, unemployment and lack of clean water and sanitation. As a result, the child malnutrition rate is very high – causing stunted growth and a wide range of diseases.

The main reasons for malnutrition are poor access to resources and lack of awareness about nutrient dense food crops and how to best use available food crops. As malnutrition is intricately linked with poverty and cognitive development of children, decreasing childhood malnutrition in poor farmers’ households is an urgent aspect in the poverty-ending mission of Heifer’s work.
Photo by Matt Bradley, courtesy of Heifer International
Through a special Heifer International matching project, we hope to help more than 4,300 households in the poorest parts of the Mekong Delta region gain self-reliance by providing them with a cow, small animals and extensive training so they can maximize their income from their small farms.
The Vietnamese government has such confidence in our work that it is offering to match more than $765,000 if we can raise an equal amount from our donors. That means every dollar you contribute to Heifer today will have twice the impact, but we must raise a total of $1.3 million to fully fund this important project.
We’ve already raised $236,068 toward our goal. Help us take advantage of the full match by giving today.

Heifer News: Farm Journal Foundation Grants $1 Million to Heifer

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Philadelphia, PA (February 27, 2012) — The Farm Journal Foundation announced its Farmers Feeding the World campaign’s largest single commitment to date, with a $1 million grant to Heifer International.

Through the Farm Journal Foundation’s commitment to Heifer, the organizations will identify communities in both the U.S. and developing countries that would significantly benefit from the gift of livestock, as well as training in animal husbandry and basic smallholder farming practices. The grant will be targeted to sustainable hunger relief projects such as Heifer’s Seeds of Change in Appalachia and the Arkansas Delta, REACH (Rural Entrepreneurs for Agricultural Cooperation in Haiti), Integrated Livestock Development in Sierra Leone, and the Small Farmer Project for smallholder agriculture development in Armenia.

“It’s been a very exciting and rewarding first year for Farmers Feeding the World because of the ability to learn from and work with organizations like Heifer that are committed to solving world hunger through sustainable agricultural practices,” said Foundation Chairman Andy Weber. “Heifer is one of the most effective and efficient NGOs in the world in the fight against hunger and is totally in sync with our mission to rally American farmers and ranchers to help solve world hunger.”

There are approximately one billion people living in chronic hunger today and, sadly, many of those are small farmers in the developing world. The partnership between Farmers Feeding the World and Heifer International will enable thousands of families to permanently pull themselves out of poverty and chronic hunger both globally and here in the United States.

“We are grateful for the support we receive from the Farm Journal Foundation, and we are very excited by the chance to work with American farmers, who realize the benefits of working at a greater scale and efficiency to boost agricultural production. Working together, we can help smallholder farm families increase their production capacity so that they can truly help feed the world,” said Pierre Ferrari, president and CEO of Heifer International.


About the Farm Journal Foundation
The Farm Journal Foundation is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to sustaining U.S. agriculture’s ability to serve the vital needs of a growing world population with education and assistance focused on the unique interests of people and organizations aligned with U.S agriculture. The Foundation houses Farm Journal’s myriad advocacy initiatives such as the Farmers Feeding the World campaign and elements of the Farm Journal Legacy Project. For more information, please visit www.FarmersFeedingtheWorld.org.

“Worldbuilders” Raises $308k for Heifer

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SometimesHeifer’s support comes from unlikely quarters.

Turns out,one of Heifer’s greatest advocates is a fantasy author named Patrick Rothfuss. Hehas a broad following of lively and thoughtful people, and he cheerfully marshalsthis army in Heifer’s name. During his annual fundraiser, Rothfuss’s Worldbuilders charity matches their donations by 50 percent.

This year,Rothfuss set the goal at $50,000, then $100,000, and kept bumping it up…
When the Feb.7 deadline hit, Rothfuss had raised $308,966!
We are alwaysimpressed by his passion for Heifer’s mission (last year he raised $192,000),but this was incredible. Rothfuss truly brought his entire community together.

In additionto the outpouring of support, Rothfuss also got stories from readers about howmeaningful the act of giving to Worldbuilders/Heifer could be. Here’s a neatexample:

I love, love, love Worldbuilders, but as a broke law student I can’t afford to donate much… So this year, my fiancée and I had a fun idea. We agree with your take on Valentine’s Day, so this year as our “Valentine’s Day present” to each other, we donated in our name to Worldbuilders.

We thought setting aside money for goats was way more important than setting aside money for unnecessary trinkets, and what better way is there to celebrate loving each other and wanting to spend our lives together than by making the world we want to live in better, and honoring an author whose work we adore?

Thank you,Patrick Rothfuss, for throwing your time, energy, and reputation behind Heifer’scause. And thank you for showing us howgenerous people can be when they’re given the chance.

Although thedeadline for the match has passed, you can still donate to the Worldbuilders team page.

Weekly Article Roundup: Sharing the Spirit of Giving!

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There is nothing better for a nonprofit than to see its donors and supporters working hard to engage their family and friends in the spirit of giving. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen some great online fundraisers of some wonderful people working towards bringing everyone together for the greater good. Check out just a couple of the ones we’ve seen so far:


Worldbuilders 2011 Fundraiser: 
Long-term Heifer supporter and author Patrick Rothfuss has created this holiday fundraising campaign. He offers his readers a couple of different options on how they can join in on the spirit of giving to Heifer. Option 1 allows for a lottery win. All you have to do is check out his Team Heifer page and donate. Once someone donates the funds will be matched by 50% and someone will be entered to win a drawing full of swag. You can also pick Option 2, which gives you the option of buying ‘stuff’ but all of the proceeds go to the Worldbuilders Team Heifer fundraiser. Last but not least, Option 3 is a fun auction of different signed art or maybe a guest appearance in a comic book. 


Travel Bloggers Give Back
We are always grateful for bloggers who choose to write about the wonderful work those in our organization do. The co-founders of Green Global Travel blog have created a fun way to raise money for Heifer by donating 25¢  to everyone who signs up for their email newsletters.


Giving Back with Southern Weddings:
Southern Weddings, an online and hard-copy wedding publication, has joined the holiday spirit of giving by working towards raising enough money for a “Joy to the World” gift that includes: two sheep, four goats, a heifer and two llamas. To work towards their goal, they are asking their lovely and dedicated readers to support their fund and also donating a portion of their advertising rates to their fund. 


Real World Hero 2011
A couple of years ago, some gamers got together to create a group to help make the world a better place. They now have a fundraiser called Real World Hero. The premise behind the group is even though we can all play and have powers online, that doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference in the real world as heroes, too. Check out what the Real World Heroes are doing to make a change in the real world. 


Have you seen a great fundraiser to benefit Heifer online? Share with us in the comments.

Dodgeball Tournament Donates 28k to Heifer

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The coveted Dodgeball Octocat Trophy
In an attempt to throw balls at their enemies and raise money for charity, the San Francisco based company GitHub hosted their First Annual Dodgeball tournament.

Seventeen teams signed-up and each pitched $3,000 into the charity pot for a fun, friendly afternoon of dodgeball. 

The first place winning team Heroku, a cloud application platform, won the tournament which meant the bulk of the donations - $28,500 - were donated to Heifer. 

Heroku founder, Adam Wiggins said, “We chose Heifer because of its unique approach to improving the lives of the world’s poor.  By providing a sustainable source of food and income, it empowers the recipients of aid to build their own futures.”

The Heroku team, “Dodging-Samurai-42,” on the left in grey. 


The Dodging-Samuri-42 has they prepare to defeat their opponents 
by throwing foam balls of fury. 


Congratulations and a big thank you to Heroku! 

Also, a big thank you to GitHub for such a creative fundraiser! 

Heifer Staff Give Back

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Story submitted by Stephanie Chesher, senior director of Donor Services and Operations at Heifer International.

 It all started about four years ago when LoriJo and Kent Peters lost their 19-year-old son, Collin, in a tragic motorcycle accident. After his death, his parents wanted to make some sense of what had happened and wanted something to keep them busy through their first Christmas holiday without their young son. The Peters are members of Church of the Brethren, so they were very familiar with Heifer and our animal model–especially the sheep. Collin happened to love sheep. As a toddler and throughout his childhood, he carried around his stuffed animal “Sheepie.” Even as he got older, his dream was to buy a farm so he could raise his own sheep. Because he loved sheep so much throughout his lifetime, there was a real, live sheep at his funeral.


So fast forward to this past January. After raising more than $11,000, the Peters again raised a record-breaking $5,600 for the 2010 holiday season. But something horrible happened. Somewhere, somehow, this package of donations never arrived at Heifer Headquarters. All the work, all the time, and the Peters family’s legacy for Collin were gone in an instant. Most of these donors that contributed to the Collin Peters fund were friends, family, or church members, but others were complete strangers who read about Collin’s fundraiser in a newspaper article. Obviously, the Peters family was devastated with the situation. 

Our team at Donor and Volunteer Services here at Heifer wanted to help the family, and we all jumped in to help figure out a plan. We contacted all their donors over the last few months, and to date we have received $4,200 of the $5,600 original donation. Now, our team at Heifer is working hard to raise the remaining $1,400 to match their original donation. After a great bake sale on October 21, we are on our way to reaching the goal.
Heifer Donor and Volunteer Services staff hold their
first bake sale to raise funds

“As upsetting as it was to have all those checks lost back in January, beautiful things have come from it. Thanks to Heifer, I must say. God bless you all and all you’ve done for us and for Collin’s memory.” – LoriJo Peters, Collin’s Mother


Do you have someone you’d like to give in honor or memory of this holiday season? Visit our online Gift Catalog, and find the right donation for your loved one.

A Heifer report from our youngest volunteer – Zack Meskell

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Hey Heifer Fans!

This is Zach Meskell writing this one, your local charismatic and perky chap!

Anyway, I just wanted to all let you in on the recent smashing news of our donation from those fine fellows at St Gabriel’s Episcopal Church. This spiffy little institution has something called an Outreach Committee, which is essentially a chapter of the church which fund raises for amazing non-profit institutions like us.

For their holiday season bonanza, they had their annual Advent Fair, where the members of the church donate handmade goods to the Outreach Committee, who then sell them and give the money to us. How totally cool is that, or what?

All together, they raised $1,800 for the local Heifer group!

Well, really they raised a little less then that, because there was a second part which I have yet to mention: The children (Not the Youth, we’re talking 6-12 here) have raised almost $60 by themselves over the summer by collecting loose change, which was also included in the check.

So, a few weeks ago I went up, accepted the check, gave a quick talk, glorified the qualities of the good food at the meetings, recommended that people check out the volunteer group, and was generally thankful for the money.

Over all, a hearty toast to all those people at St Gabriel’s,

…for Heifer Portland (not live),…, this is Zach Meskell signing off.

Zack Meskell, a young entrepreneur and CEO of Cards for Cows, started to his business at the age of 8 years old. He and his brother and sister design and create hand-drawn greeting cards on 100% recycled paper. They donate their proceeds to Heifer International.

This post originally appeared on the Heifer in Portland volunteer blog.

Q&A with an 11-Year-Old Social Entrepreneur

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Hats for Hunger was founded in 2008 by Andrew Castle when he was 9 years old. He was inspired by a Heifer International catalog, and decided to make a difference himself. He combined his love of animals and knitting to start Hats for Hunger. We asked Andrew a few questions about his 2010 goal to raise $5,000 for a Gift Ark:

-Why did you choose Heifer International? For Christmas 2007, my grandparents let us chose an animal from the Heifer catalog. That was the first I had heard of Heifer and I loved the concept of providing people with the tools to improve their lives. Rather than a food handout, the gift of animals creates self-sustainability. A gift to Heifer has an exponential impact on the lives of communities. -How did you come up with the goal of 5k? The first year of Hats for Hunger, I raised $1,500. The second year, I had a lot of academic commitments and only raised $700 which I donated to the Vermont Foodbank. For 2010, I had a goal of $3,000, but Noland Hoshino (lead Heifer volunteer in Portland) got me excited about the idea of raising $5,000 to buy a gift ark.

-How did you learn to knit hats? I learned to knit when I was 7 as part of a school project. -Just how many hats have you made this past year? This past year, I haven’t knit any because the volunteer knitters have done such an amazing job! The first year of Hats for Hunger, my brother, mother and I knit all of the hats and it was overwhelming. $1,500 of hats is a LOT of hats! Many were custom hats, but the most fun was creating new designs. The most popular hat that year was the “valentine hat” with a heart on top.

-How many volunteer knitters are there? We have over 80 volunteer knitters/crocheters around the country (and one in England). They are an amazing group of people and have given so generously of their time and effort. We have a group on Ravelry.com which was started by Hannah, an amazing 9 year old in Minnesota. She and her family have donated over 100 hand knit hats to Hats for Hunger. Also, a group of knitters in Virginia called K1-D2 did a hat drive throughout the state at yarn stores and collected 297 hats. Fortunately, they arrived the day after Thanksgiving because they took over our dining room. -What is your favorite part about H4H? At first, it was knitting the hats and getting H4H started that was the most fun. Now it’s watching the growth of the company and seeing how many people are excited to get involved. In just a few months, we went from 150 Facebook friends to over 1,000! That has been pretty cool. (www.facebook.com/hatsforhunger)

-What goals do you have for 2011? My goal is to raise $10,000 for Heifer International. Also, I’d like to introduce a “Premium” line of hats this year. Many of the donated hats are made with high-end fibers (alpaca, cashmere, merino wool, etc) and have incredible handwork. They should sell for more than $20. I’d like to add a chart to the website to show how each hat helps to pay for animals via Heifer. For example, a $20 hat pays for a flock of chicks or ducks. A $30 hat pays for honeybees. A $10 hat buys a share of a pig, etc.

-If there is any additional information you’d like to add that would be great, too. 100% of profits goes directly to Heifer International. We have virtually no overhead since almost all of the hats and yarn are donated. Someone who buys a $20 hat is essentially getting a two for one deal. $20 goes to Heifer AND they get a cool hat. Also, our customers often buy extra hats to donate to homeless shelters and children’s homes.