Accidental Windfall

For anyone closely connected to us, you probably received at least a handful of posts, messages, or calls about starting some aspects of our plan slightly earlier than we originally planned.

In my research into everything we need to do to run this organization, I started trying to gain a deeper understanding of the behavior of people bidding on ambulances on GovDeals. I wanted to know how high bids went for certain kinds of vehicles, vehicles with certain mileage, and when bidding really started taking off. I also wanted to know how the email alerts worked when bids were closing or when I was outbid. I wanted to learn how bidding near the end of an auction changed the end time of the auction.

Well, I learned something alright. I learned that a VERY good ambulance can actually close out at right around $5000…

The culprit

So, without really planning to start worrying about fundraising until April and maybe starting to truly start getting ambulances into our inventory until May/June… we needed to scramble to pay for this very good condition ambulance.

We started our “friends & family” funding plan by reaching out to those closest to us and asking them if they could give a little and maybe even spread the word. Many gave far more than we expected of anyone and everyone’s donations were very appreciated.

Hopefully, future campaigns for funding will be a bit more coordinated and will help those that are giving have a clear idea of specific goals and how they are helping. We will likely do small fundraisers like this via GoFundMe in the future. I see options for individual participants to have some “push goals” that we could do special fundraising for.

We still haven’t fully funded the ambulance. So, if you are feeling generous, please click the button above to be redirected to a PayPal donation campaign. Thank you to everyone that has helped get us this far. We have raised $3500 of the $5700 we need. Every little bit helps and like one donor said: “ounces make pounds.”