Winterfest may have hit its goal of $200,000 with crowdsourcing fundraising in November, but it’s tally has now climbed to more than $233,000, its organizer said Wednesday.
Winterfest offers free ice skating and other holiday events in Bushnell Park from the day after Thanksgiving through early January. But by Nov. 14, the group, which had lost about $150,000 in city aid, had raised $221,000 by securing donations through the CrowdRise.com campaign site. Instead of operating through Jan. 2, Winterfest will continue through Jan. 8.
New money and gifts continue to flow in, said Jackie Gorsky Mandyck, managing director of the iQuilt Partnership. Amazon has donated $10,000, plus $5,000 worth of hats and gloves. The Niagara Bottling gave $7,500 and the Metropolitan District Commission gave $2,500, she said.
“We haven’t set a new [fundraising] goal because we raised a majority of the money for this year,” Mandyck said. “We’re going to come in almost breaking even. What we raised is what we spent, but anything we have left over we’ll go ahead and use for next year.”
