Students in SAR High School’s Cookies for a Cause club volunteered at The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore on the morning of March 8. The student volunteers planned and facilitated spring-themed craft projects in a playroom, as well as played one-on-one with patients. This volunteer event is part of the club’s larger fundraising initiative. So far this year, the Cookies for a Cause club has raised over $5,000 to fund arts programming at Montefiore.
The visit to Montefiore culminated another year of baking and fundraising success. The Cookies for a Cause club leaders are visionaries and instituted a number of outstanding new initiatives.
In addition to standard bake sales, Cookies for a Cause has a platter initiative. People from around school can pre-order online cookie platters for Shabbat. They come beautifully wrapped and ready for pickup on Friday. Rachel Charendoff, a devoted club member specifically involved with the platter initiative, explained that the online order system “helped our sales by making the platter orders more organized and easier to keep track of. It also allows us to look at the orders before we bake, therefore letting us decide which cookies we should make more of that week so that we can have enough cookies for platters and our regular Friday sales.”
Cookies for a Cause also increased sales by adding special items. For Chanuka, Cookies for a Cause created Mystery Maccabee packages of cookies that students were able to buy for $5 and give to their Mystery Maccabee. One of the clubs student leader, Eliana Schochet, elaborated, “Whenever a grade plays a game of Mystery Maccabee, it is hard to think of the right gift to give, especially for someone you are not close friends with. I thought that I would probably give my Mystery Maccabee cookies from CFAC…We quickly realized…many people would love to buy them for their own Mystery Maccabees. We took orders, baked, and wrapped over 50 Mystery Maccabee gifts and raised almost $300 overall.” Eliana added, “It was so nice to see these packages being…enjoyed by so many people of my grade. It was especially meaningful knowing that it supported a great cause.” The club also ran a special hamantaschen bake that they sold as part of their Mishloach Manot packages.
This group of committed volunteers bake every Thursday night in the SAR High School kitchen. Including the remaining Thursday nights of the school year, the club will have had 27 outstanding bake sales! Kol Hakavod!
