A Ladie's Clothing Swap

We had our first official adoption fundraiser this past week. It was an idea that a friend of mine came up with. A few of her friends had done a small clothing swap between their small group of friends. They cleaned out closets and put the clothes they wanted to get rid of together and then met and hung out and went through each others stuff before they hauled it off to goodwill.

Well, someone had the great idea that we take this idea, make it bigger, and charge admission to raise money for our baby! This was one of those fundraisers that really served lots of purposes. People got rid of their unwanted clothing items, people got to shop and leave with new to them clothing items, and we raised money for adoption. It really was a win, win, win!

The prep work was really minimal. We put the word out that we would be collecting clothes. We had a few drop off points. We tried to get all the clothes in by the day before the swap. Then on the day of the swap, we met at the church and sorted and organized all the stuff. We had some super sweet helpers :)

sorting, sorting, sorting....it was hard to not go thru and take a lot of stuff for ourselves! We limited ourselves to five items while setting up!

Here is the finished result...

this little chalkboard right here....it made it all seem so real...we are adopting again! I'm so excited.

and here are the shoppers...

It was such a fun night. We ended up raising $475! That was more than what we originally thought. If we did something similiar again as a fundraiser, we would probably change a few things. The admission charge would get you so many items and then after that amount we would charge like a $1 for each additional item or something like that. But just as an event...it was so great! I feel like it really benefited people...we had some really great stuff! We are having a yard sale later this spring and the clothes that were left over are going to that. We decided we should make it an annual event!! Maybe even twice a year...spring and fall!