Photo from the Ronald McDonald House Charities Alberta, Edmonton House Facebook page.

By Curtis Galbraith

Community

Unique fundraiser for local Ronald McDonald House chapter

Dec 28, 2020 | 7:00 AM

Local community groups have had to come up with some unique fundraisers because of the pandemic.

Megan Durda with the Grande Prairie office of Ronald McDonald House says for her organization, that included helicopter rides.

“Our good friends at McDonald’s. Fred Dodd, who is the owner/operator here in Grande Prairie, he also has a passion for flying and he owns his own helicopter. So, in an effort to help us raise additional funds, he auctioned off helicopter rides for all of our events. We used those as raffles or in live auctions. They seemed to go over well.”

Durda says they were still able to hold all their events this year, except for one. She adds turnout was not as good as past years, but better than they expected.

She adds some quick changes had to be made for some events.

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“Fly by the seat of our pants and go with the flow to meet the restrictions. We changed the format of our golf tournament, for example, probably four different times before the actual event and changed dates and formats from a shotgun start to a tee time schedule.”

Durda says half of the families that use the 32 available spaces at the Ronald McDonald House in Edmonton are from the Peace Country. She adds about 40 families access programming through the local office.