IIG charity wine auction
The 5th Annual IIG Charity Auction was held on Thursday, 13 August 2009 in the beautiful ballroom at the Wanderers Club. It was attended by about 220 guests from the insurance industry.
A word of welcome was extended to our Sponsors, Charities and VIP Guests with specific mention of David Harper, CEO of the IISA and his wife, Belinda.
Without our sponsors, we cannot arrange such wonderful events and a they were thanked for their contributions.
ACE Insurance came on board as our main sponsor this year and we thanked the CEO of ACE, Mike Durek. The IIG is very grateful for ACE Insurance’s financial contribution and for stepping up to the plate when we needed them.
In addition to ACE, we have a few very loyal co-sponsors who has been supporting the Charity Auction over the years.
GlenrandMIB and Thatch Risk Acceptances have been there, from the very first auction in 2005. They have been involved for 5 consecutive years.
Altech Netstar came on board in 2006 and have been a sponsor of this event for 4 consecutive years
The following companies joined us in 2008 and have been sponsors for the past 2 years: Etana Insurance, Pinion Insurance Brokers, Swiss Re and Trustco
The newest addition to our Auction family is Global Choices, who is a first time sponsor this year.
Thanks to our generous sponsors for this event, we managed to “kick off” the evening with donating R16 500 to each of our 3 charities, being Just One Child, Frederic Place and Wetnose Animal Rescue Centre. This was a result of “upfront” donations received from Etana Insurance, Trustco and Pinion Insurance Brokers.
Other parties that played a role in the evening was also thanked - our secretary, Marguerite, for all the arrangements she made, Morne Smit from Thatch Risk Acceptances in Cape Town, who flies up every year to assist in unpacking all the boxes with the various lots and items, Jenny Lawler, fellow IIG council member, who also assisted us with the unpacking, Melanie and Sue from SHA who assisted with the registration of the guests and helped us during the auction to spot the bidders and ensure that all the paperwork is done, Roy McGrath, our Financial Guru at the IIG, who set up the excel spreadsheets to ensure that we can register the quests as well as to reconcile all the winning bidders and keep track of the sales and profits as the auction progress, Gavin Blok, who put together the slideshow of our logos and in addition produced the video presentation of the charities at no cost to the IIG, the Wanderers who have hosted the function for the 4th consecutive year and who gives the IIG a 50% discount on the venue hire every year to support our cause.
At the IIG, we review our charity organizations on an annual basis and we aim to support the elderly, animals and children. The charity organizations that we support this year is Frederic Place - an old age home in Coronationville for abused, abandoned and destitute old people, Wetnose Animal Rescue Centre who believes in the right to life and rescues abused and other animals and Just One Child that started out by taking in abandoned babies and now have over 10 children that need to be taken through their schooling etc until they become independent.
In order for our guests to know where their money would be going to, we put together a short video of each organization which we screened just before the auction started.
As many people in our country are currently experiencing very difficult times, you can just imagine what impact this have on charitable organizations that rely on donations.
The IIG with the support of its members, Associates and colleagues are fully committed to raising very needy funds for worthy charitable initiatives.
During the past 4 years, we have managed to raise substantial funds have been able to break the previous year’s record, year on year.
This is largely due to the generosity of people in our industry and also as a result of the efforts of our auctioneer. Philip Powell, our guest auctioneer from Cape Town, got the evening off to a great start and kept the bidders excited, involved and entertained throughout the auction. We auctioned a range of exclusive wines, brandies, whiskies and sporting memorabilia.
We encouraged our guests to use their bidding paddles as often as they like to make the important occasion, a memorable and successful event by reaching out touching the lives of those less fortunate, with love and compassion.
We would like to extend our most sincere thanks to those people who opened their pockets on the night and showed such generosity.
The IIG is happy to report that we managed to raise in excess of R210 000 on the evening for our worthy charities. We were ecstatic to be able to reach our goal of raising R1 000 000 for charity over a 5 year period.
