“Yard Sale for the Cure (YSC) was created to give back to all those who've been through breast cancer and to those who help in one way or another to fight the illness. We too dream of a world without this illness that touches 1 in 9 women in Canada.

YSC was created from several inspirations. During my last chemo treatment at TEGH, we saw a woman come into the clinic and present the nurses with a sizable fundraising cheque. There were hugs and the moment was a very caring one as the connections were strong. The moment struck us and we felt the desire to help too. The combination of a growing pile of yard sale stuff in our basement and our very good friends holding their yearly sale for cancer donations inspired us to create a street sale - which quickly became a pilot market in the Beaches and is now, three years later, a national effort to have the largest series of yard sales in the world.

The goal is to be raising millions of dollars each year from the stuff that people no longer need. We like that YSC helps drive conservation efforts with all that stuff finding a second home, but the real goal is to help create a world where our daughters may never hear those awful words - you have breast cancer. If you haven’t yet hosted or shopped at a Yard Sale for the Cure sale, please do join us, each year, on the last Saturday in May.”

Rachael Smith - TEGH oncology patient and Founder of Yard Sale for the Cure

 

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With over 250 yard sales sprinkled throughout this neighbourhood and some 1200 across the country, people were finding great bargains and getting the extra satisfaction of knowing that the money spent was going to help fight breast cancer. The sense of community was wonderful.

Whether it be a relatively small contribution of $25, a local retailer offering up a portion of sales from the day or a street sale that brings neighbours together - the efforts all add up to an estimated $150 000 - $200 000. One hundred percent of funds donated from yard sale hosts to YSC go directly to help fight breast cancer.

 

A very special thanks to our corporate sponsors – RE/MAX (Presenting sponsor), Abraxis Oncology, 1800GOTJUNK?, Crystal Light, HGTV, Livedeal.ca, and The Snap Newspaper Group – their support makes the event possible.

 

RE/MAX agents across the country helped spread the word to their clients, donated time at the Home Show and many hosted large sales themselves. Thomas and Sally Cook on Kingston Road hosted a neighbourhood sale at their office and had already raised a thousand dollars before the event had even started.

 

 

1800GOTJUNK? brought two tractor trailer loads of great stuff to Kew Gardens and hosted a huge sale. With the help of O'Malleys Pub and their generous donation of food and time (they operated the BBQ area), the team raised an incredible $11 000. With 16 other GOTJUNK? sales happening across the country, this great idea started by the Toronto GOTJUNK? team is making a huge difference.

 

Don’t forget to go to the website, www.yardsaleforthecure.com to make your donation and we hope to see you next year on the last Saturday in May hosting or shopping at a Yard Sale for the Cure. If you’d like to help in any way with the event or want to be on the distribution list for information on next years event, please call 416 694 CURE or e-mail info@yardsaleforthecure.com.

 

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I already know of some $50 000+ in donations and some $20000 that's been donated on line to this point. It comes in slowly over a fairly extended period. We are estimating about 50% growth from last year with some $150 000 in total anticipated. An interesting stat that is still approx at this point is that some 20-25% of people involved in YSC have heard about it from RE/MAX...pretty impressive.

 

Very topline highlights:

1) Arrival of Melissa on staff to help run and manage the charity. Life became much better!

 

2) Significant change in the operating system with kits being held centrally and mailed to hosts. Simpified in field execution and forecasting

 

3) RE/MAX stepped up to presenting status and launched YSC to their total Ontario / Atlantic network. We estimate that approx 20- 25% of hosts heard about YSC from RE/MAX….based on numbers we looked at a couple of weeks prior to the event. With absolutely thousands of agents across North America - their network has real potential to further fuel YSC growth

 

4) Got Junk moved from a trial execution to a full sponsor and expanded their Beaches pilot sale to 17 markets. We've only heard results back from the largest sale (Toronto market) at this point, but they raised $11 000 and estimate that their network raised some $25000!! With 380 franchisees across North Amercia, again, this has incredible potential

 

5) Abraxis Oncology came on board with excellent execution at the clinic and hospital level. They secured several significant promotion events, an excellent medical media and drove excitement at the "front lines". Strikes me that this has a lot of potential to un-lock people closest to the illness in years to come

 

6) Crystal Light and Kraft came on board right at the end and provided Crystal Light samples + sponsored the delivery of the host kit. Hopefully much more potential here. I imagine a day with grocery executions, "back of the peanut butter jar" communications etc

 

7) IKEA in Edmonton came to us at truly the 11th hour with a proposal to host a huge parking lot sale with 8 tractor trailers full of aged inventory. We just heard back from the Edmonton team that they raised $15000 and it sounds like they had a wonderful day. Like Got Junk, every dollar raised was being donated to YSC. We have a couple of great photos from the day. Imagine if we could pull something together more broadly with them

 

8) Joining our communication agencies this year was Match Marketing. We are fortunate to have Grip Limited as our integrated creative ad agency, DThree as our web designer and provider, Hill and Knowlton as our PR firm and now Match as our in field operator. Match brought Kraft to the table, helped staff the Home Show (generously donated by The National Home Show), assisted in several markets to spread the word, hosted 5 large sales raising nearly $5000 and provide a lot of energy and potential for what can be done in the years to come

 

9) A number of media sponsors came on board to help drive awareness.

- HGTV provided us with excellent coverage on many of their media vehicles including HGTV, all Alliance Atlantis channels, HGTV website, Famous Players and Cineplex in lobby tv spots.

- Livedeal.ca came on board this year with great potential to build and host the search engine part of our website. While not able to do it for this event, we will be working with them in the off season to figure it out. They did provide great exposure this year through their on line offering, offering yard sale hosts free postings on their site and helped secure significant exposure in the TorStar papers and on line offerings.

- The Snap Newspaper Group delivered excellent community level awareness in over 20 communities across the country with exclusive stand alone flyer insertion + ads + feature stories in virtually every paper in the network.

- The Captivate Elevator Network came on board again with 835 screens in the Toronto area

- We also had terrific pro bono airings of our radio and tv spots. While the actual numbers are harder to calculate when pro bono, we know that we got excellent pick up based on the number of people who said they were hearing them a lot

 

10) Excellent PR pick up. Combined efforts with sponsor PR teams really built the idea and execution bigger than any one of us could have done. Rachael was kept very busy with interviews. Potentially most exciting was a long segment (nearly 5 minutes I believe) on CBC National on Saturday night. We'll have a much better sense of the total pick up in the weeks to come as H&K evaluates results

 

11) Love my parents – organizing their neighbours into a significant event at the church that Tom Thompson went to, they more than doubled their numbers from last year and posted one of the biggest sales so far on record with nearly $1500 in the small rural town of Leith. Clearly Rachael needs to do more unnecessary shopping as three consecutive years of sales has our own sale down to the $500 mark….but our basement has a smaller pile

 

12) Total registrations grew slightly from last year, but the quality of the sales are much higher per commentary above. We estimate charitable revenues to grow by some 50% vs last year. Of course, I had hoped for more growth, but I feel confident that the experience is excellent and our challenges are clear for next year to figure out how to drive further home hosts + the larger community and corporate involvement.

 

This year I come out of the event more energized than ever because the potential is pretty clear for what this event can do. We’ve started to capture opportunity areas and things that require improvements, but that is for another day and would make this already long note un-bearable! Maybe we should take a week off first anyways!

 

So – my congratulations and thanks to everyone. We are definitely on our way to something quite impressive. I have a sense that this coming year has the potential to deliver the tipping point.

 

Kind regards
Andrew

 

All photos, unless otherwise noted are by Mark Kerr & Andrew Howard, and courtesy of SNAP Beaches.