Christmas Carol Bar Crawl

About eight years ago my friend Nate and I sat together having drinks and came up with an idea of a Christmas carol bar crawl through Broad Ripple.

We began our first crawl with eleven people. Ugly sweaters, Christmas pajamas and a few other silly costumes. It was small but the potential was there. The next year our numbers more than doubled. We laughed, caroled and may of ruffled a few feathers of the people at Kilroy's. The following morning I was quick to send out an invite for year three.

As we got midway through the year there was some discussion of making the event a fundraiser. That year we paired up with Pub Theology and our crew of friends raised $2,155 for Gifts of Grace. The following year four, we upped our donation to $2,402.

For year five, we had some larger than life donors and friends really dug into their Christmas spending money to spread the love. We also focused on a new local charity, The Julian Center. With last minute donations, literally made at the first stop of the crawl, we hit the $3,500 milestone.

Our core carolers have now grown to nearly fifty with many more making donations and for year six we set a goal of $5,000 and if that was met, I would be shaving my head.  Well that goal was met and exceeded as we raised more than $7,500.

Year seven we became even more ambitious with a goal of $10,000. With the cherry on top event Shots for Tots we reached this monumental goal. I was in awe that night and had to count the donations three times and to make sure I wasn't dreaming even asked for a pinch from one of Santa's elves. 

As we embark on year eight we've set our goal for a specific amount of $11,000. This is the cost to fully run the Julian Center for one day. 

Below are a few denominations that your money can do:
$25 Can provide a gas card for a survivor to get to work.
$60 Can provide a 31 day bus pass to a survivor starting a new job.
$100 Can provide four hours of staffing for our 24 hour crisis line.
$160 Can provide a week’s worth of cab fares to get people safely to      shelter.
$250 Can provide gas or bus ticket to get a survivor out of town for safety.
$500 Can run the entire Julian Center campus for one hour (staff, utilities, overhead, security).
$1,000 Can provide six weeks of a trauma journaling class to 10 sexual violence survivors.