The St Mary’s Fundraising and Social Group met recently to plan events for the end of 2021 and in to 2022.
Gillian Rose had the great idea of using some of the photos from our 2021 Photograph Competition to create a St Mary’s calendar for 2022. The St Mary’s Christmas Raffle will happen this year with the draw taking place on Sunday 19th December. If you’d like any calendars or raffle tickets, they will be available at St Mary’s or can be mailed/delivered to your home.
Starting in January 2022 we’d like to collect as many attractive gin bottles as we can by end of the first quarter and then sell them online. If anyone is a dab hand at using Facebook Marketplace or eBay, please let us know. We thought it would be good to have another Quiz Night that folks could join using Zoom. This worked well earlier this year and means we can avoid any COVID related restrictions. Date for the quiz and your diary is Friday 11th February (please note that the date has been revised).
For Easter we thought we’d try to bring back the good old Smartie tubes fundraiser. The original idea was to eat the Smarties and then fill the tubes with twenty pence pieces. That might be more difficult these days, so any form of dosh whether note(s), cheque, or donation by PayPal or straight to our bank account will be gratefully received. Smartie tubes will be available during Lent with return by Easter ideally.
Our Easter egg collection will start again around mid-March. As in 2021 we will offer several collection points – St Mary’s, the Rectory and one or two congregation members’ homes. Donated Easter eggs will be given to local charities such as Barnardo’s and Cyrenians in time for the Easter celebrations.
We are also hoping to have an Easter Breakfast at St Mary’s again in 2022. If it’s possible this will take place between the 8am service and the 10am service in the Choir Vestry on Easter Sunday (17th April).
The group decided to reschedule the Cheese & Wine Evening (originally meant for 15th October) to May in 2022. The date for your diary is Friday 13th May. The event will be advertised in the weeks leading up to the event.
Fr Terry has suggested a new St Mary’s Bake-off event for Sunday 19th June. The idea being to ask the congregation to donate home baked goods for auction at church on Sunday 19th June.
St Mary’s Gift Day will take place on the Patronal Festival Day which is Sunday 14th August in 2022. More information about the Gift Day will be published in our newsletters leading up to the event.
We all enjoyed Photograph and Poem Competitions in 2021. We plan to re-run the Photograph Competition through June to August and the Poem Competition in the final quarter of 2022. More information will follow when we launch both competitions.
Matthew McVey, our organist, would like to offer a sponsored hymn singing event later in 2022 – hopefully when we can all sing without masks on! More details will follow once we know the event will be feasible.
So that’s the plans for now! If you have any further good ideas for social or fundraising events, please drop anyone in the group and email or text.
Members of the Fundraising & Social Group are Fr Terry Taggart, Anne Farquhar, Matthew McVey, David Rose, Gillian Rose and Lydia Ross.
Summary calendar of events below:
