Host an Event
Supporters from a Brownie troop to collegiate Bollywood wannabees have hosted fundraisers for Butterflies USA. You could, too!
Below are just a few of the many ways to host an event to raise funds and awareness for Butterflies. As this selection of spotlighted events suggests, raising funds for Butterflies USA can be creative, gratifying, and fun. Have a unique idea? Reach out to butterfliesusa@gmail.com.
In April 2019 Brownie Troop 3029 at St. Ignatius Loyola Elementary School in New York City hosted a bake sale following a Sunday morning Family liturgy. To prepare, the troop leaders oriented the girls to the work of Butterflies NGO. While the Brownies sampled Indian sweets and beverages, a Butterflies USA board member showed how resilient, spunky street children in New Delhi led lives very different from theirs.
South Asian Students Association members at CUNY’s Baruch College in New York City and Boston College in Newton Massachusetts organized dance performances with revenues from ticket sales directed to Butterflies USA, Inc.
Boston College’s troupe performed traditional dances with regionally distinct choreography and costuming. At Baruch, the dancers stepped straight from a Bollywood screen, rhythmically kicking off the students’ Diwali gala. Right before the fun began on each campus, there was a short presentation about Butterflies NGO and its innovative, award-winning work with street and working children in India.
For more than a decade, Butterflies USA board member Loren Bassett , a Power Yoga instructor and founder of Bassett’s Boot Camp, has led a powerful yoga flow class to benefit Butterflies USA. Loren held these popular sessions at several studios in the Big Apple as well as at LuluLemon retail stores.
Loren’s “Flow for a Cause” became a semi-annual event which friends of all ages and abilities attended to support an organization they love. Loren hosted these fundraisers after she visited Butterflies NGO in New Delhi and saw the children practicing yoga, while learning about good health, wellness and the integration of mind, body and spirit.
After moving to Dallas, Loren hosted a particularly successful powerful yoga flow class in her home studio capped by a Sound Bath Meditation. One of the yogis who designs the American Gypsy jewelry donated a percentage of her sales, too. The consensus seemed to be that this was an inspired pairing.
Lunch and Ticky Tray Auction
An enterprising Indian-American senior at West Essex High School in Fairfield New Jersey sponsored a wildly successful luncheon and ticky tray fundraiser. Guests schmoozed and dined to live music while bidding on a range of donated goods and services. An emotional high point occurred when the Butterflies USA board surprised the student organizer with a video thank you produced by the Butterflies Broadcasting Children media cooperative. The fundraiser was widely promoted in the local community and a weekly local newspaper covered it.
Faculty Student Volleyball Competition
Inspired, a parent supporting at this luncheon decided to organize a fundraiser of her own a few years later: a faculty student volleyball competition. This event drew an enthusiastic response at a school campus which has no formal sports program.
Dipti Mehta offered a special performance of her award-winning one woman show Honour:Memoirs of a Mumbai Courtesan as a fundraiser for Butterflies USA during her month-long residency at the Baruch Performing Arts Center in New York City.
A woman of many talents, Dipti conceived of and wrote the hour-long one-act drama set in a brothel in Mumbai’s red-light district. She plays a diverse range of roles, male and female, which include an aging, hunched-over pimp, a bewitching goddess, and Rani, the 16-year beauty whose mother is grooming her for a courtesan’s life. Honour nabbed a Best Solo Show Award at the New York Fringe festival. After this benefit performance Mehta wrapped her residency and took Honour on the road to New England, Canada and the UK. Earlier that year Butterflies USA friends and supporters had met Dipti Mehta and been treated to a teaser excerpt from Honour as part of a program where three female panelists talked about their work with marginalized populations. The two other panelists were theatrical director Jessica Baumann, who conceived of the Arden/Everywhere project, a production of As You Like It where refugees play the roles, and Butterflies NGO’s founding director Rita Panicker. Taken together, these two magical evenings — set on the Baruch College campus where Butterflies USA was founded — succeeded to brand-raise, friend-raise, and fundraise for our 501(c)(3), a fact which its board members acknowledge with gratitude.