Over $500,000 awarded to nonprofits at Children's Auction luncheon, with bonus marketing workshop

LACONIA — The Greater Lakes Region Children’s Auction distributed $532,000 in grant funding to 60 child-oriented nonprofits Wednesday. In lieu of ceremonial checks, representatives of the recipient organizations spent a half hour learning from Corina Locke, the creative director of SnapRoot marketing, before a luncheon at the Huot Career and Technical Center.

“We heard from a lot of the nonprofits that digital marketing is an area that they would love some insight into and some help,” explained Children’s Auction Executive Director Jennifer Kelley. 

The presentation taught attendees how to utilize Canva, a free online graphics tool, to expand reach across social media channels like Facebook. 

Andrea Condodemetraky, a board member of the Santa Fund of the Greater Lakes Region, expressed gratitude for the marketing lesson, and the $30,000 awarded to her organization in grant funding.

“The presentation in particular was really cool because it condensed a whole lot of really good information into a short amount of time and how to get yourself out there with marketing, which is not something we do a lot with,” Condodemetraky said. “It was really helpful, and I look forward to putting some of that information to good use.”

As for that $30,000, Condodemetraky said it will be help to accomplish the Santa Fund’s mission of providing winter wear to 700 children each year.

“If you imagine that spending, about $150 to keep your kids warm with outerwear, that's the value of what we’re doing,” Condodemetraky said. “We also have an emergency fund that we provide to help families in crisis.” 

The “Children’s Auction is really the nonprofit we connect with,” Locke said while listing a series of similar workshops she’s conducted. “We’re trying to help them out with their digital marketing. Especially with the nonprofits.”

The region’s sparse digital marketing environment is especially challenging for nonprofits.

“Up here it’s an untapped digital market. You Google something out here, and it’s so hard to find anything,” Locke said. Nonprofits "don’t really have a marketing budget. I mean, you find a lot of small businesses up here that don’t have marketing budget. Big companies, they’re taking up all the digital marketing, you see it all the time, so nonprofits definitely have to hustle a little bit more. And the tools are constantly changing, so how do you keep up with that if you don't have someone who specializes in that?”

Lakes Region Mental Health Center also received $30,000. The money will be used to support training and implementation of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR, therapy. 

“It treats children who have been exposed to trauma,” said Beth Vachon, director of development and public relations. “We appreciate so much, that level of support for our work.”