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Project Narrative
Claudia Lopez Garcia
Dr. Earnest Kaninjing
Internship in Public Health
April 25, 2021
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This semester, I chose to work with the Baldwin County Board of Education Nutrition

Department for my internship. The nutrition department has a side program called Baldwin

Grows that helps set up and run gardens at every Baldwin county school to teach students the

importance of gardening and how it can contribute to an active and healthy life. Students are able

to plant different foods, crop them, and learn to cook with them. However, working or even

getting into the garden posed great difficulty to students with physical limitations or disabilities.

Uneven ground and dirt mounds can pose dangers to those with wheelchairs or physical

limitations; therefore my partner and I came to the conclusion that a paved or brick pathway

could get rid of these issues and allow all students to participate. Since the Baldwin Grows

program is a non-profit, we had to come up with a way to raise our own money and came down

to doing a fundraiser.

For the fundraiser, we decided to partner with a brick company that sells engravable

bricks and gave us a reduced price if we sold a certain amount. After having the goal of creating

a brick pathway for all students to have the ability to participate in the garden, the next step was

to call businesses and ask them to purchase an engravable brick with their business’s name or a

message on it that would be placed in the pathway at the garden to advertise and thank them for

their contribution. We were sure to increase the prices of the bricks and sell them for more than

we were paying for them when selling them to businesses or individuals to ensure that we would

be making a substantial profit back. We offered three brick options, a small brick with three lines

of text that we sold for $30 and profited $17, a $50 brick with 6 lines of text that we made $33

from, and a bigger $100 brick that gave us a profit of around $80. Our goal was to sell a total of

$5,000 in bricks; the profit from this amount would be sufficient to build the pathway.
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To carry out the fundraiser I created a very large list of every business in Milledgeville,

their address, phone number, and owner/s. Using this list of compiled data, my partner and I

made hundreds of phone calls advertising our fundraiser and asking for businesses’ email

address to send them more information about the fundraiser and the purpose behind it. For the

emails, I created a colorful flyer with all of the information regarding the fundraiser and different

brick options, an order form that included a space for the business to write the message they

wanted engraved as well as mailing and payment information, and an email template giving them

some background information about the Baldwin Grows program and gardens.

We set a deadline for the fundraiser for the last week of our internship, week of May 3rd,

so the fundraiser is still on going at the moment. However, evaluating the fundraiser from now, I

feel that it has been successful but could use improvement. At the moment, we have sold $3,150

out of our $5,000 goal and although we have not hit our goal yet, the amount that we have raised

will be enough to create a paved pathway (as opposed to a brick pathway as originally planned)

that will still be able to serve our goal. Fundraising can often times come in waves when a

sponsor decides to donate large amounts, therefore there is still a possibility that we could reach

our goal, but it can also have low dips, and this is something we experienced several times

throughout the duration of the fundraiser. For example, COVID-19 has caused financial

hardships for many businesses, causing some to go out of business or hardly have enough

revenue to continue to stay open and running. This made it very difficult for us to find sponsors

and donors. Although this situation was out of our control, I feel that this type of fundraiser

would have been much more successful during a better economic time.
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If I were to do this fundraiser again in the future, I would do more advertising rather than

mostly calling and sending emails. Asking restaurants, churches, clubs, and public places like the

bowling alley, theater and skating rink if they would allow you to post flyers or posters

advertising the fundraiser could raise awareness to more individuals rather than just businesses.

Including an option where individuals can also simply donate any amount they want rather than

having to buy a break could also help raise the profit by smaller amounts. Furthermore, adding

different options for how those individuals can pay would help greatly. For example, creating a

Venmo or Paypal and putting the QR code to these on the poster would give individuals the

ability to immediately donate without having to write a check and mail it to the school which

may offput some donors. Lastly, if the fundraiser was not making enough money, I would

suggest selling other goods too. Giving donors different options on goods could help capture

different crowds that would not be captured with one product alone.

**All materials created for this project (including flyers, order forms, email template, and

spreadsheets) will be available on electronic portfolio.