Woo Hoo!! The Ocean Ridge Charities Association (ORCA) sold their 1,000th From the Kitchens of Ocean Ridge cookbook and continue to sell them at selected retailers, local craft fairs as well as from ORCA members. We are now selling our fourth reorder of cookbooks.

 

Our cookbook offers 255 pages chock full of 450 tried-and-true recipes with original artwork gracing our cover and inside pages for a tax-deductible, competitive price of $15.

 

 

Aside from hearing how people bring our cookbook’s recipes to parties and sometimes the book is the theme of neighborhood cooking group lunches, neighbors also share stories of how the cookbook is a wonderful gift for many different occasions.

 

We’re proud to say this book wasn’t just any ol’ publisher’s generic collection of recipes warehoused ready for charities to sell. It is a unique community affair and it all started mid-2011 while gathering ORCA fundraising ideas, and so far has enabled us to give roughly $10,000 to help local non-profit charities improve the lives of the underserved in Brunswick County.

 

We established a series of activities to envelop the generous Ocean Ridge Plantation residents into ORCA’s fundraising efforts and to orient them to our then fairly new charity, such as:

• Sought Volunteers: Around 150 Ocean Ridge Plantation neighbors answered our call to contribute their tried-and-true favorite recipes. Also neighbors volunteered to type and proof and pay in advance so ORCA could afford to print the cookbooks professionally.

• Held Art Contest: Seven neighbor artists donated 31 art pieces ranging from oil, watercolor, graphite and photography.

• Held Silent Auction: To generate revenue, we sold at auction the art contest’s donated artwork.

• Held Name the Book Contest: To give the book a creative name related to food or our community lifestyle residents submitted 33 entries of suggested book titles.

• Community Voted On-line: To give our neighbors the ability to vote online for a community activity we revamped our charities’ website. There were over 200 votes cast for their top 4 favorite art pieces and preferred name for the cookbook. The winning book title and original art graces the front and back covers as well as the first few pages of the book. · 

• Held a Cabaret-Type Fundraiser: This idea germinated while developing a cookbook taste-testing fundraiser proposal - and since 2011 our Bistro show has been an extremely successful event that quickly became an anticipated first-day sell-out. In 2014, the fundraiser was expanded to a two-night combo for our fourth annual cabaret. ORCA has been successfully selling the cookbooks at almost 20 retailers and various local craft fairs, such as the Belk Charity Day Sale Event.