Friday, November 6-Saturday, November 14

Every year, East Shore has held an auction to help build community and raise some funds for the church. This year will be no different…except that it will be different! The entire auction will be held online. It will be free to participate, as the bidding is all electronic and will be open from Friday November 6, 9:00 am and Saturday November 14, 8:00 pm. We will host a Zoom party for the last hour or so, as we encourage you to get your final bids in, so keep the evening free on Saturday, November 14.

Send Us Your Contributions!

We’d love to bring the East Shore community together by having every member involved in some way, so now is the time to start thinking about what you could offer.

We don’t know what the situation will be by early next year, so you’re going to need to be more creative than usual. Think of events or activities you could host outdoors, small events in your home (max 5 people) or events you could host via Zoom. Perhaps you can host an online game night, a fashion show, a holiday party or speed social event using breakout rooms! We’re also encouraging more physical items, food, crafts, gift baskets, gift cards or certificates, that may help people out with doing their holiday shopping. We have a list of suggestions, but don’t be limited by the ideas we had.

As the situation improves, you may be able to move an event to your home or church instead of online, invite more people to participate for a donation, or expand your offering in other ways, but the activities we’re going to offer in this year’s auction should be possible under the current conditions.

When you have an idea, you can complete the Contribution Form, or call Amanda Strombom to discuss your idea.

We’re excited to see what new ideas you can come up with, to make this auction a unique event where everyone can participate.

Fund-A-Need: COVID-19 Relief Project

The Auction Team has decided that the Fund-A-Need item for this year should be a COVID-19 Relief project, rather than something physical needed at church. The idea, proposed by DRE Amanda Uluhan, is to offer a Grocery Drive-Thru or something similar. The project would be funded from the Auction Fund-A-Need, and would provide an opportunity for all members, children and youth to get involved with providing much needed support to anyone who is in need of food and other basics. It would be held at the church, thus helping to build our connections and network on the Eastside.

If the idea of this project inspires you and you would like to help with defining and planning it, so that we can make a more specific proposal to the Board for their approval in mid-September. Please contact at [email protected] with any questions or get involved!

by Amanda Strombom

The 2019 Auction Fund-A-Need project funded installation of Stanley automatic doors in our buildings. We are excited to announce that this project is completed. When we are finally able to return to onsite services and meetings, you will find brand new automatic doors in the Sanctuary building, Administration building, and the Education building. They open smoothly with just the push of a button and offer convenience and ease of use for cane or wheelchair users and anyone whose hands are full toting belongings, supplies, or babies. The staff will get a lot of use on Sunday mornings as we dash from place-to-place picking up and delivering items for the services, coffee hours, RE classes, etc.

Many thanks to the 2019 Fund-a-Need donors for helping bring this “wish list” item to fruition.

by Dianne Upton, Facilities Manager

Due August 10th

At this year’s online auction we will be “Building a New Way” of holding the auction, while aiming to retain as many features of former auctions as we can!

One of the most popular features of the auction has always been, and still will be, the Fund-A-Need. This is an opportunity for one specific project, that we recognize will benefit the church but can’t be funded from the church’s Operating Fund, to obtain the funding it needs from the participants in the auction. Examples of projects that have been funded in the past by this method include: automatic flush toilets in the Sanctuary building, the conversion of a classroom in the Education building to be used for videoconferencing – the “Zoom room”, and most recently, the installation of automatic door openers.

When you return to the campus, you will be delighted with these new door openers that will enable anyone to open the doors, hands free, to the Education Building, the Admin Building and the Sanctuary. While this helps everyone who has ever approached a door with their arms full, or struggled to open the heavy Sanctuary doors, it will be especially important in this COVID-19 period where we want to minimize the shared use of door handles!

This year, a few ideas have been floated as candidates for the Fund-A-Need, so we are instituting a new process to select the best project. If you have an idea for a suitable project that would benefit the church and its mission, valued at around $10K which is the amount usually raised, we encourage you to discuss it with the relevant staff or team and then gather quotes for the items and work that would need to be done. At the Auction team meeting on August 10th, we would like each project advocate to give a short presentation on their project, with costs and benefits, so that the Auction team, in conjunction with staff and the Board, can choose the project which will be most appealing to potential bidders.

To learn more about the Fund-A-Need process, and to discuss your idea, please contact Auction chair, Amanda Strombom or Membership Development Manager, Nicole Duff.

by Amanda Strombom, chair Auction Team