Ted Barris

It was that time of the night. The host had told plenty of jokes. The volunteers had completed most of the preparations. The event was unfolding the way most had hoped. Even the chair of the fundraising committee had a smile on her face. It was time for the pitch. So, out came the president of the charity that was the beneficiary of the evening to speak.

“Time to dig deep folks,” he said. “It’s why we’re here, right? To make some money.”

With that, the host slipped into the role of an auctioneer, inviting the audience to begin bidding in a live auction. In this case, it was the 12^th annual “Scrabble with the Stars” event in Toronto, bringing together a slew of musical, radio, television and movie stars, as well as sundry other personalities (I was invited in to be one of those), to compete in games of Scrabble for fun and fundraising in aid of the Performing Arts Lodges.

PAL is a downtown TO apartment complex providing affordable housing for those in the performing arts professions in need of accommodation in their retirement years. I know it may sound a bit odd – Scrabble as a fundraiser – but it really works.

“What am I bid for Joel Wapnick?” the host shouted, looking for a starting bid of $500. “What am I bid for the former Scrabble World Champion?”

Well, as it turned out, Wapnick, because of his capacity to give a table of four Scrabble players (a celebrity and three paying guests) a leg up to potentially achieving the top score and prizes for the evening, commanded a $900 bid. Moments later, another Scrabble wizard, Robin Pollock-Daniel, the top-rated female Scrabble player in North America, brought in nearly twice that in a second live auction.

And that’s exactly what the PAL beneficiaries had hoped for, in the heat of the moment, a flurry of bidding with several well-heeled guests getting into the spirit of giving and knowing it was all for a good cause.

We have all been there. We have all gone to these benefits, fully aware that the idea of the evening is to give as much as we can. I remember among the first and most successful community benefits here in town was the annual “Doodle Auction.” For most of its years-long run, it attracted hundreds of participants who, one night each year, bid both silently and live on the simplest, but most sought-after doodles and signatures of celebrities as diverse as hockey celebrity Don Cherry, movie star John Travolta and naturalist/painter Robert Bateman. Community booster Barb Murphy and her team of volunteers spent nearly the entire year between each Doodle Auction collecting submissions for the next auction. And the beneficiaries – the Celebration of the Arts and the York-Durham Heritage Railway – enjoyed both the spotlight and the proceeds of a very profitable night.

The Sam Sharpe Gala at the high school a few weeks ago had much the same aim – to raise the profile of the Uxbridge Secondary School students’ initiative to travel to Vimy next year, and, along the way, the students hoped, to end up with a few dollars after gala costs to assist in the travelling expenses to get 54 students overseas next year.

But the Sam Sharpe Gala, the Doodle Auction and the Scrabble with the Stars benefit, all require three vital ingredients: A visible and laudable cause. A seemingly reachable financial objective. And a group of volunteers with boundless energy, focused commitment and a strong empathy for the beneficiaries.

“It takes months of work to make this one night happen,” said my sister, Kate Barris, who has chaired most of the Scrabble with the Stars events the last dozen years. “And I thank our small but mighty committee … for looking after every little detail.”

She wasn’t kidding. Her volunteers booked the 40-plus stars, arranged for their care and feeding, organized a silent auction that would ultimately stimulate thousands in bids, managed all the elements of the buffet meal and bar, orchestrated the Scrabble matches at all 40 tables, rewarded the winning scores, marshalled everybody in and everybody out of the venue in a matter of hours.

I know. I watched the last of the volunteers carrying away the Scrabble boards, pens and score sheets, table cloths, tables and chairs. And it was the same at the Sam Sharpe Gala – students, faculty and staff transforming U.S.S. from functioning high school to a Vimy museum / banquet hall / performance stage and back again – in a matter of 48 hours.

And why? Well, yes, it’s the pride of achieving a financial goal, perhaps. It’s the sense of accomplishment – both personally and in the broader sense of community. But I think deep in the heart of every benefit or fundraiser is also a sense of defiance – despite staring disaster square in the face, that the “small but mighty committee,” as my sister called it, pulled it off and survived to tell the tale.