Give a Girl $15

Years ago, my Girl Scout Troop was working on their Silver Award Project.  The girls had decided that they were going to make and donate blankets to Project Linus.  One of the things we needed to do was raise money to purchase our supplies.





We decided we wanted to do a Lemonade Stand as a fundraiser.  We had some money set aside from our Cookie Sales, but we went ahead and requested help from our local grocery store.  They graciously gave us a $15 gift card to get started.





We took the gift card and bought the supplies we needed to make the lemonade. We used the balance of the card to buy baking mixes so that the girls could also offer baked goods for sale.

We split up the mixes and headed home.

image: http://www.projectlinus.org/

One of the girls in our troop had a parent who worked at a horse farm.  The owners of the farm gave us permission to set up our lemonade stand inside the "break" barn.  With the money we earned from our lemonade sale, we were able to buy materials.




We then scheduled a blanket making day.  The girls brought their friends and everyone brought money for pizza.  We had a couple of volunteers from the Quilt Guild come out with their sewing machines, and they taught the girls how to sew with the machine, and they got a quilt going.


But, there was one other thing that we did.  We put out a call to friends, asking them if anyone had any fleece to donate for no sew quilts to go to Project Linus.


And boy, did they ever.  In fact, for about six months after our big day, I was still coming home to find donated fleece sitting on the doorstep.  Think of the abundance of zucchini in August.  That was what we were experiencing with fleece.



In all, the girls took that $15 that was donated by the grocery store, and turned that into almost $200.  We combined that with the $50 we had set aside from cookie sales to bring the total up to $250.  With a coupon from the local fabric store we were able to buy fleece.... more than we expected to buy.  The day we went to purchase the fleece was also a major sale day. 


In the end, we donated 150 blankets to Project Linus.  These were full size blankets - not tiny little kid blankets.  The girls were teenagers, and we wanted blankets that would be appropriately sized for teenagers. 


All of that from a $15 gift card from the grocery store, and wonderful people who were willing to donate fleece yardage that they were finding either on sale or in their basements. 


All that from a $15 investment from our local grocery store. 

image: http://www.projectlinus.org/