A crowd of about 300 attended the Flash Fundraiser Sunday at Townsite Park in support of Churches United for the Homeless.

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

Churches United for the Homeless rocked the community last week when interim director Devlyn Brooks announced impending financial doom. On Monday, Aug. 12, he revealed that the Moorhead-based charity that provides shelter for hundreds of homeless men, women and children could not make payroll 48 hours later without $60,000 in immediate donations; other obligations amounting to $140,000 were coming up by month’s end.
“We were all asking, ‘What can we do to help?’” former Moorhead mayor Del Rae Williams reports. In typical fashion, she gathered her troops – in this case, two educators deeply involved in working with children – and together, they put together what was quickly dubbed the Flash Fundraiser.
On Sunday, some 300 showed up at Townsite Park to show their support for Churches United. By the evening’s end, almost $5,000 had been raised through the sale or auction of donated crafts, ice cream and snow cones, as well as direct donations through Venmo.
“It all came together over coffee at Third Drop Coffee Wednesday morning,” Williams says. “We accomplished it in just four days, and it was everything we expected and more.”
Lorilee Bergin and Jane VanHatten joined her that morning. They dived into the pile of suggestions Williams’ original post on Facebook had generated. “Some of them clearly were well-meaning but impractical. We settled on something the community could rally around … a way they could express their support.”
The idea the three women hatched was scheduled for just one hour on Sunday night, Aug. 18. It began as a pack-your-own-picnic gathering in the park in the center of the city. But it quickly evolved. as people stepped up to offer everything from handmade earrings to gnomes and homegrown bouquets to help generate funds. Girl Scout Troop 30042 assembled kids’ “busy bags” to sell. Addie Loerzel brought her ice cream wagon. Some of the donated goods were sold directly, with all cash donated to the cause; others became part of a hastily assembled silent auction. Williams collected direct donations via cash and the Venmo cash app.
With musicians James Bergman and Ben Wisenman providing music, the casual event quickly drew a crowd. Some, Williams says, came specifically to make contributions. Others, like a man walking his dog, noticed the crowd and stopped by to investigate; he and others ended up contributing the cash in his pocket.
Bergin, a teacher and member of the Moorhead School Board, discovered a glitch that probably kept attendance from going even higher. When potential attendees googled the park’s location, they were given the wrong address – 10th Avenue rather than 10th Street. “Google sent some of them to the wrong place. I feel bad about that,” she says. You can be sure she alerted the search engine of their error.
Meanwhile, other larger donations had poured into the Churches United coffers, averting the immediate crisis but laying a foundation to meet future challenges. “They’d already met and exceeded their goal by Sunday night,” Bergin observes. But collecting cash wasn’t the Flash Fundraiser’s only objective.
“This gave our community a chance to embrace the need to appreciate and support them,” she says. “It was a matter of doing whatever we could do. And,” she adds, “this was one of the easiest events I’ve ever been part of. No budget, no website, no advertising beyond posts on Facebook, and we were able to raise a total of $4,821.17 to help Churches United.
“People just wanted to have a chance to show how much they care.”