Foundation Reflections

Thursday, 01 April 2010 13:31

Today begins the second quarter of 2010. Where has the time gone?

It seems like it was just a few weeks ago that we were discussing the budget and the enrollment projections for this year and now with only about 10 weeks of school left for the current year, the high school is thinking about yearbooks, class trips and graduation and we in the Development Office are thinking about all of the exciting spring events that are being planned in support of the school. It also compels us to reflect on the past school year with all of the school's accomplishments as well as reflecting on the sorrow we all experienced recently with the sudden loss of two high school teachers. No matter how hard we plan, it proves once again that our plans may not always be God's plan and that we must be submissive to His plan, no matter how difficult that may be.

The Development Office has been quite busy since the beginning of the school year with the traditional fundraising programs and events as well as exploring some new and exciting initiatives which we hope will provide for some long term financial support for our school. In spite of the continued challenging economy, the supporters of Eastern Christian School have once again risen to the occasion and supported the school in its hour of need. Time and time again, when the call for support went out, the response to our call was answered by those who understood the need and had a desire to help those who were in difficult financial straights. While in some cases we had fewer donors, those who gave, gave in larger amounts to help us through the rough financial periods.

Our current year's Annual Fund appeal has consistently been ahead of previous years, and we enjoyed a very successful fundraising dinner in February, raising nearly $ 100,000. in support of the school's scholarship fund. We assisted the Athletic Boosters in their first ever beefsteak fundraiser, which turned out to be a very successful event as well. We are looking forward to a great Auction Elegance on April 22nd as well as our annual Christian Education appeal on Sunday, April 25th. Following these events will be a Flower Sale for the benefit of the Athletic Boosters on May 8th and then our annual Golf Outing on May 24th. So you can see that we are keeping ourselves very busy for the cause!

On top of all of this has been our involvement in obtaining a location for a new resale store to benefit EC. We think we have found the perfect location at 965 Belmont Ave, North Haledon and shortly we will begin with renovations to make this a state of the art "upscale-resale" store with over 11,000 square feet of selling space. We have hired a director and we received a donation of a pickup truck so we are really excited about this new project. We hope to be open for business by August, 2010. You will be hearing and reading more about ditto (our new name) in the months ahead. We will be looking for a lot of volunteers to help us in a number of ways at ditto beginning this summer. We hope many of our former volunteers and new volunteers will be able to help us.

This week we also moved a step closer to finalizing our plans to put solar panels on the roofs of all three campuses as a way to save on our sizable electric bill as well as to benefit from the solar program's investment opportunities. Just as soon as all of the final approvals are in place, we will inform our supporters of this long term financial benefit to EC.

These certainly are exciting times for our school as we continue to raise support both in the traditional ways as well as in new and creative ways. We sincerely hope that all of these efforts will help stem the ever rising cost of a Christian education and that more and more families will consider Eastern Christian as the right choice for educating their
children.