Fundraising is not our strong suit here at Sugarshine.
Recently we have had huge help from countless different sources making raising much needed funds possible.
Bunnings Warehouse hold a sausage sizzle outside each of their stores every Saturday. If you don’t eat meat, we encourage you to go and simply donate to the worthy charities that put a lot of time and energy into their fundraisers there every week. As we have learnt this past month, it is HARD YAKKAH pulling one of those together!
Of course, you must buy something from Bunnings while you’re there. They support so many different charities, we were in line for more than a year before we got our turn!
Despite having 12 months to plan, our sizzle still felt like a last-minute thing.
Of all the times the goats had to get out and push the neighbours grandchildren down a hill, it had to be the day we were serving Vegan sausages to a crowd who weren’t necessarily going to like them…
As you can imagine, big goats like Ruben, and small children, do not mix. Neither do early mornings and our team members. We were all completely frazzled by the time the sizzle started. The kind of frazzled that makes you say ‘never again’, and question life in general. Okay, I may be taking artistic license there, but we really were worried when we had no sauce, napkins, or BBQ utensils by 10am. (Seeing as we were supposed to start serving by 8:30, this is a reasonable point to be freaking out). By 11am we were never going to do this again. Unless we were to earn $1000. By the end of the day, we had forgotten what feet felt like. By the evening, we were on top of the world. Thanks to Tofurky and their generous sponsorship, we sold more than 500 sausages, and made almost $2000.
Our wonderful volunteers (you know who you are), were our sanity during the day. Like we’ve said many times before, you make Sugarshine. All those who give us their days-off and work themselves to the bone to support the animals are what make doing this Sanctuary thing possible. Steve and team from Flour of Life Bakery in Helensvale, were the real hero’s of the day. Steve made over 400 vegan sausages from scratch just for us. They were delicious, and we were beyond lucky for the help of the Bakery, because if we hadn’t had them swoop in at the last minute we would have been without enough sausages for the sold-out day that we had! So thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.
We were pleasantly surprised by the response to the vegan sausages. Lismore is a progressive place as it is, but Bunnings Warehouse doesn’t exactly attract that crowd we would normally have at our Farm Animal Sanctuary Volunteer days. Most people were surprised about the new form of cylindrical protein. Surprise did not lead to disgust in many cases, and we can confidently say the day was a success!
It’s safe to say Bunnings can look forward to some more Vegan Sausages in the future.