Online auction overflows with support for flood victims
Leslie Scott always knew people in Clarence-Rockland had big hearts. She just didn’t know how big until she decided to organize an online auction to raise a bit of money to help people in town hit hard, when the Ottawa River flooded this past spring.
Scott figured she might manage to gather together a couple dozen items to auction off and maybe raise a couple hundred dollars so that she could contribute to the TD Canada Trust’s Rockland flood relief trust fund. Instead, she experienced a flood of goodwill from both local businesses and individuals who donated gift certificates and various items and from the horde of people waiting for the cyber signal when the online auction was on.
“I was just thinking ‘I’ll do a little auction and raise a few hundred dollars,’” Scott recalled. “I had people calling to donate things right up to the day of the auction.”
By the May long weekend, Scott had a list of more than 100 items to go on the cyber auction block. By the end of the auction and collection of all final sales, she had $12,882 to deposit in the Flood Relief trust fund.
“They (trust fund officials) were extremely grateful,” she said, smiling.
Scott was on maternity leave from her regular job as a manager and event fundraising expert for a non-profit agency in Ottawa. She’d done a short stint of sandbagging with other local volunteers during Rockland’s flood relief efforts. But with a newborn daughter demanding her attention, she wondered if there was a way she could use her organizational skills to help flood victims.
This resulted in her online auction project, which also showed her how generous and giving Clarence-Rockland’s residents and business community are. She noted that some of the people who donated items or gift cards for the auction were victims of the flood themselves.
“These were people who were hurting, and they just wanted to help,” Scott said. “You really see the way that this community is knitted together.”