Winter Wonderland is open for two and a half weeks in December and is built, manned and paid for solely by volunteers and donations, all coordinated by Clearwater Community Volunteers.  The dates we will be open this year are December 4th through December 20th.  Admission is free, but we request that people donate a new toy or non-perishable food.  Some attractions have a small fee, which is used to help pay for Winter Wonderland.

A few facts:
• The event requires $45,000 - $50,000 to build and run each year
• It takes over 5000 volunteer hours to build and decorate the village, to operate it for the weeks leading up to Christmas, and then to pack it all away until the following year.
• We give the gift of Winter Wonderland, with free tickets to all attractions, to children from The Police Athletic League, The Boys and Girls Club of Clearwater, The Haven, Make-A-Wish Foundation of Central and Northern Florida - Suncoast Region, the special needs class from Safety Harbor Middle School, and this year we’re adding an orphanage from Tampa.  Our goal is to add at least one new group of children each year, so that as many kids as possible experience our beautiful holiday village and have wonderful memories.
• We donate over a ton of food and toys to the Homeless Emergency Project each year for needy families, so that those children can have Christmas too.

We are asking the businesses of downtown Clearwater to become Partners with CCV to give Winter Wonderland to our community.  We are promoting Saturday, October 24th as “Winter Wonderland Day” as a way to raise a portion of the necessary funds to create our city’s wonderland village.  We invite you to donate all or part of your business income for this one day, October 24th, to Winter Wonderland. 

The following are our donation levels, and you will receive a plaque to acknowledge your contribution to CCV as well as other benefits:

100% of Proceeds - Platinum Partner
75% of Proceeds - Gold Partner
50% of Proceeds - Silver Partner
25% of Proceeds - Bronze Partner

As a result of your contribution, your business will be listed on our Sponsor Board at Winter Wonderland as a Winter Wonderland Partner.

CCV will promote Winter Wonderland Day with the intention of driving business into downtown on October 24, therefore increasing the business you would normally do on that day.  Our plan is to help bring more people into downtown, showing them that the shops, restaurants and businesses downtown are a great place to shop, eat and visit.  We will do this by passing out postcards, e-mail blasts, press releases to the media, word of mouth and also by providing postcards for each business owner to hand out.

In addition, Friday, October 23 is the 4th Friday event and CCV participates at each one of these events, providing an inflatable for the kids to play on, and in one case we even brought our train. We would also promote Winter Wonderland Day at the 4th Friday event, again with the purpose of bringing more people to downtown.

To summarize, the goal is to get people to downtown businesses, while supporting Winter Wonderland.  By participating, you are taking an active role in making the holidays much brighter for many children and their families.

We will also invite the 75% and 100% business proceed donators to join us on stage at the opening of Winter Wonderland so that we can acknowledge your participation and contribution in putting on Winter Wonderland.

CCV would also appreciate and accept flat donations if the percentage plan doesn’t work for you or your business.  Any help is welcome!

Very Sincerely,

Pam Ryan Anderson
Executive Director
Clearwater Community Volunteers
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.