Festival of Trees a success, despite drop in donation

This year's Festival of Trees, held online, seems to have been a success, having met its funding goal and proceeding without any major technical problems.

"It went great, the whole virtual event went really well," said Boys & Girls Club of the Hi-Line Marketing and Events Director Krystal Steinmetz.

Steinmetz said the event, in which community members bid on Christmas trees decorated and submitted by local businesses, organizations and residents, drew the attention of many new bidders this year as well as the usual suspects, on top of new people looking to donate to the club, which the event helps fund.

She said she suspects the fact the event was virtual widened its exposure this time around, even though the pandemic has had a negative effect on the amount of money the event raised.

Despite the influx of new interest and the return of the aforementioned usual suspects, Steinmetz said, overall, the event made less money than it normally would.

This year it brought in more than $50,000, where a normal year would make almost twice that.

However, she said, that dip in donation was more or less expected given how much the pandemic has squeezed people financially and socially, so she not surprised or disappointed.

In fact, she said, $50,000 was the goal the club set for this year because of the stresses the pandemic has put on the local community.

"We brought our goal within what we thought was a reasonable number this year," she said.

Steinmetz said she thinks the event went well, all things considered, even though she missed the old format this time.

"In person for an auction is always preferable, but, that said, we thought the support was amazing, and we were able to pretty easily get to our goal," she said.

The technical side of the event also went well, despite some anxiety regarding its virtual elements.

"I'm happy to report that everything went really smoothly," she said.

Steinmetz said she was afraid something would go wrong during the event that she wouldn't have been able to fix, and she's glad things went as well as they did, and that there are people in the organization who have more expertise in this area.

"That definitely, was one of the fears," she said. "I am not a tech person, but we do have people in our organization that are better with that kind of thing, planning a virtual event."

Steinmetz said next year will hopefully see the event being done in person again, but the relative success of this year has the club considering whether or not to carry some of the virtual elements of this year into the more traditional event.

"We're going to talk about that in coming months," she said, "... but there are parts of it I think we'll keep."

In addition to the innovation required on the part of the club, she said, she was impressed by the trees this year, many of which were topical to 2020.

While she said she didn't have a favorite this year - because all of them were so good, she said - the tree adorned with decorative toilet paper was particularly amusing.

"It was interesting to see what businesses did to incorporate this year into their tree," she said.

Steinmetz said she wanted to extend her thanks to the community for their support during this difficult time.

"We are struggling, people are struggling, businesses are struggling, and still our community manages to come together and do what it can to support the kids and we're so grateful to that," she said.