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The annual Futurity Show and Auction has been home to the Quechua Benefit auction for the past 4 years. To date, the auction has raised more that $ 400,000 from generous alpaca breeders across the United States. This year’s bash was a big success and ended with your truly turning up bald.
Things were fairly normal in the barn on Friday. People were checking in show animals and I was helping Mario collect money for the banquet tickets. It wasn’t until around 4 pm that the ante got upped. Mario disappeared for a while and when he returned with Tim Simmons in tow he asked me a seemingly innocent question “how would you like to raise an extra $10,000 tonight?” I said, “That’s great but how do we do it?”, and Mario says, “Tom has a great idea but it involves you.”
At 63 years of age you kind of develop a sixth sense when things are about to start down hill. A little more curious I asked,
“What do I have to do?”
“Well Tom thinks that we could raise $10,000 in pledges if you would agree to be sheared.” Says Mario
“Sheared?” I asked
“Yeah” says Mario “We’ll tell people if they commit to $10,000 in total on the pledge cards before the nights out, we’ll shear you on stage in front of everyone.” I said “what happens if they don’t get $10,000?”, “then you keep your hair.” After thinking for a moment I said “they won’t put up $10,000 just to see me humiliated and bald.”
“You are probably right”’ says Mario.
Ok I’ll do it.
It wasn’t more than 5 minutes later Mario came back with a huge grin on his face and said “You’re going down!” It seems Alan Cousill and gang was busy collecting pledges.
That evening after I spoke about the history of Quechua Benefit, Mario began exhorting the crowd and soon 42 pledge envelopes made their way to the front. A total of $9,360 was collected in the first pass. I decided if I was going down I wanted to take as many dollars with me as I could. I told Tom who was auctioning off the donations that we were $3,700 short and I was safe. Another bundle of envelopes appeared immediately and we were at $11,500. By the end of the auction there was $ 15,000 in pledges.
 Next everyone decided that the biggest donors on the pledge cards wanted a whack at my head with the twelve tooth comb and shears, provided courtesy of Lon Stevens of Llamatique. My buddy Alan Cousill took the first blow, he decided I needed a Mohawk. Next Libby Forstner stepped and announced she was afraid she would cut me and tried to beg off, no worry said the crowd and as Libby’s shaking hand guided the shear through my hair I yelled to high heaven. Libby screamed and the crowd laughed. Jennifer Lutz of Cas Cad Nac farm took her turn and mercifully cut Cousill’s Mohawk down to the skin. Finally my fellow judge Jude Anderson took pity on me and tidied the whole thing up thereby demonstrating her expertise with the shears.
I won’t tell you what my wife said when I came home bald.
Fundraising is the life blood of any charity. Quechua Benefit has been particularly blessed by generous donors. Today’s economy is tight and charities around the world are experiencing lower revenues. Unfortunately the need never seems to recede. It is times like these that Quechua Benefit that the Board of Directors is working extra hard to make sure you donations are spent wisely.
Our Quechua Ambassadors program is an example of how we attempt to stretch your donation dollars to achieve impact. You can read about the Ambassadors effort in the left hand column of this newsletter.
Your donations do tremendous good, thank you from all the poor Quechua people you have helped.
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