By JAMES BELL
Hays Post
During last year's first iteration of the Cajetan Cash fundraiser at Holy Family Elementary, organizers nearly doubled their expected donation total.
This year, almost as a testament to its namesake, St. Cajetan, the fundraiser raised over $80,000 for the school after replacing the well-known Red Wheel fundraiser.
"Last year, our home and school was looking for a little bit more of a supplemental income," said Cajetan Cash fundraiser chair Olivia Becker. "Because, with COVID, we weren't able to have our family fun nights, like at the restaurants in town. So we're trying to think you know, what can we do? And a raffle idea came up."
That simple idea would become the fundraiser, but not after searching for a unique and fitting name.
"Last year, when we first initially did the fundraiser, and we started looking at saints, what kind of saints would pertain to this and we found St. Cajetan," Becker said. "He is the saint of good fortune. That's fitting for a raffle. And so that's we came up with Cajetan Cash."
During this year's fundraiser, $10 tickets were sold, the same as last year, but with the expanded effort, more prizes were added.
"This year, we thought we needed to do some more," Becker said. "So we did four drawings, one for $1,000, one for $2,500 and $5,000 and $10,000 this year."
But it wasn't just a select group of ticket holders who won during the effort — the children also were rewarded with prizes and prize drawings.
"We made it a challenge for the students to sell so many tickets," Becker said. "We made it fun for the students, so they turned in sale sheets of tickets that they sold the week prior."
From those totals, she said they had special rewards to continue incentivizing sales.
"They got like an ice cream cone day, they had a lollipop day, things like that," Becker said. "And then every student who sold 40 tickets or more gets to have a Taco Shop lunch at school one day."
She said 79 lunch winners were recognized during the fundraiser.
"So that was really great," Becker said. "And then every highest seller in every classroom received $25 cash."
"So and then we did a student drawing as well. We had four drawings for the students that they could win. For every 10 tickets they sold, they got an entry into those drawings. And we gave away gift cards that they could choose from local vendors here like Taco Shop, McDonald's, Walmart, whatever. And then we gave away an electric scooter as well."
And while the effort is rewarding for the students, fundraisers like these help generate funds to operate the school.
"I mean, it's critical as part of their budgets," Becker said. "It's not just an extra, you know, we just want some extra money just to do some things for the school. It's for the electricity bills. It's for the supplies for the schools. It's for everything."
By the end of the fundraiser, she said the results speak to the generosity of the community.
"We ended up selling at 8,800 tickets," Becker said. "And...we had great sponsors that helped us with our payouts, too. So overall, we're looking at $80,000 or a little over."
With the excellent response, Becker said the Cajetan Cash fundraiser is likely to return next year.
"As far as I know, every year now," she said. "We'll sell tickets always through the month of September and have the drawings in the beginning of October."