In 2010, I was at one of the Vibes & Scribes knit nights when I was handed a flyer by a fellow yarnophile. It was for a Pink Auction, a charity bidding event to raise funds for and awareness of Action Breast Cancer. The flyer was informative but having a background in publication design (as well as communications, graphics, and fund-raising), I saw room for improvement and upon finding out the event did not have a social media presence either, I jumped on board to be co-chair and help with those elements. Within six months, our Twitter account had just over 1,000 followers and we were in contact with some of the leading textile artists and designers in Ireland. When the sun rose the morning of the Pink Auction, we had an astounding 350+ donated hand-crafted textile items and when the sun set on that day we had raised €3,000. Not bad for two women and an idea. Julieanne had the ideas and I had the social media and communications strategy. It was a good pairing of skills but the real success resulted from the generosity of the textile artists and our friends. One friend stayed up alllllll night before the auction to help me properly tag each item with its respective catalogue number. In the month before the event, I photographed every single donation properly so it could be projected onto the screen during the live auction since such carefully crafted donations as crochet, fashion design, knitting, and such are difficult to appreciate in a large room.
Though the event is over, the enthusiasm for helping others lives on. Though my co-chair moved on to another project and I became pregnant and could not continue the Pink Auction the next year, it does not lessen the success of our 2010 fundraising event.
We set up several essential social media communities we set up at the time. I still maintain the Twitter account along with my personal Twitter account. There was a Twitter account (which I still maintain along with my personal account), a blog, a Facebook account, a Ravelry group, a Flickr group…
Here are a few of the items donated (models: Lisa Fitzpatrick and Maire O’Sullivan).
