MOOSOMIN — Members of the Playfair Daycare fundraising committee recently launched a huge trip of the month fundraiser with tickets on sale now. The Win and Wander draw is a fundraiser for the daycare’s second building.
“At one of our daycare meetings, we were discussing fundraising ideas to obviously have a bigger fundraiser versus a little one, as we need to raise a lot of money for the new daycare,” explained board member Samantha Campbell. Board chair Jill Jones heard about a group in Swift Current that had great success with a trip of the month formant, so the Playfair Daycare’s Win and Wander fundraiser was born.
Starting Jan. 10, draws for the trips will begin, held every second Friday of the month until June 13. There are trips targeting families, and getaways meant for couples in locations including Minneapolis, San Diego, Disneyland, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Greece.
There’s also extra incentive to get a ticket sooner rather than later with an early bird draw happening on Dec. 20.
“If you get your ticket before Dec. 20, you will be entered in for a $5,000 cash prize,” Campbell said, adding that the early bird winner will have their ticket put back into the raffle draws for the trips. “Plus we’ll do the $3,000 cash prize every month as well on top of the trip, so you have 13 chances to win if you buy it before Dec. 20.”
There is a limited number of tickets, set at 1,700, and Campbell is hoping that after expenses, the daycare could raise around $80,000 towards their new building.
In the case where a winner chooses not to take the trip, there are alternatives available.
“You can do a 75 per cent travel voucher to anywhere that you want to go, or you can take a 50 per cent cash value of the prize that each trip is worth,” explained Campbell. “So there’s a couple of options if you aren’t a traveler, don’t have a passport or anything, there’s still obviously a lot of cash that can be won.”
Tickets are $125 each, and can be purchased online or in-person.
“You can go straight our website (playfairdaycare.com) and purchase off there,” she said. “You can contact any of our Playfair Daycare families, we gave each family that attends the daycare a book to try to entice people to buy, and you could also reach one of the board members.”
Campbell can be reached at (306) 435-9052, or Jones at (306) 435-7276
“We will have posters at various businesses with a QR code on them as well, for those that are tech savvy, you can scan the QR code,” said Campbell. “But for the generation that doesn’t use social media or QR codes, they can call or email. We’re hoping to do some more advertising in the coming months to try to get it out there so there will be more ways to purchase a ticket on there.”
Word about the Win and Wander fundraiser has been getting around town, as Jones said ticket sales have started strong.
“There’s been lots of purchases through our website, which seems to be quite easy for people,” she said. “It’s really good to see, hopefully ticket sales stay strong. And the feedback we’ve got is that everyone’s pretty excited. They think the prizes are very good and well worth the ticket price—hopefully that sentiment stays!”
The new building project has a $4.4 million total budget, with $1.5 million coming from the provincial government, $1.5 million being self-funded, and another $1.4 million needing to come from the community through fundraising. The daycare recently picked up their first Vision Maker Sponsor last week as MNP donated $25,000 toward the new daycare building in Moosomin.
“We were getting calls every week looking for open spaces, and unfortunately, we’re busting at the scenes at our current daycare,” Jones explained of the need. “So, a new building would really benefit the community.”
Currently, there’s a waiting list in Moosomin with a new building seen as essential for those with small children considering a move to Moosomin.
“Right now, we have about 37 kids that would start tomorrow,” Jones said. “So with a 90-space daycare, that would definitely take care of them. There’s probably also some other parents that would love to enter the workforce if they did have childcare that we just aren’t aware of.”
In a town well-known for its volunteerism, there’s still room at Playfair Daycare for those who’d like to help out.
“The community has been so great, they’ve reached out to us for lots of fundraisers, really looking to us to help with those fundraisers too,” Jones said. “So we’ve got a small board, and so far, we’ve been able to rely on a lot of volunteer hours from them. But of course, if we can make that pool a little bit bigger and get some volunteers from the rest of the community, that would be so great too!”
Time is of the essence in fundraising as the daycare anticipates breaking ground at their new location in the spring with sights set on being operational by the end of 2026.
“There will definitely be a large need for fundraising efforts, corporate donations, things like that,” Jones said. “Through the winter here, we’ll just be working with our architecture firm to really nail down all of the design aspects of the building, and then also working with all the other trades that are involved in putting together the site plan so when spring does come, we’re ready to break ground and start construction.”
