The Washington Council of Fly Fishers International has raised money every year for the past decade for three important non-profit efforts in our state: Project Healing Waters that helps veterans rebuild their lives through fly fishing, Casting For Recovery that helps restore confidence for women cancer survivors, Olympic Peninsula Fishing Innovations which designs and builds tools for one-handed fly tying and fly casting. 

   These non-profits do valuable work for people less fortunate than ourselves and FFI has proudly raised and donated more than $10,000 over the past decade to the three groups, including more than $3,000 in 2019 alone. Donations from Washington FFI have been a critical part of funding for the groups every year. Auctions at the annual Fly Fishing Expo in Ellensburg have raised the majority of the funds FFI donates every year, so when the FFI board decided to take a year off while moving the Expo to a new venue in Western Washington we had to come up with a new way to raise money to support our non-profit partners. 

   We’ve come up with two solutions. 

   First, we are going to move the annual Expo auction online into a monthly auction on the Website BiddingOwl. BiddingOwl is a private company that offers online auctions for non-profits to raise funds. It will allow Washington FFI to create and run its own monthly auctions within the BiddingOwl site with integrated processing for bids and payments by winning bidders. The system is easy to use and reaches more than thousands of users every month in every state. Every month beginning in October, Washington FFI will source goods and services from manufacturers and fly shops to offer for auction on the site. Go to BiddingOwl.com and search Washington Council FFI the first week of October to see and bid on our first auction items. 

   In addition to moving the Expo Auction online, the Washington Council of FFI has registered as qualified non-profit with Amazon Smiles program, operated by Amazon Inc. Amazon shoppers can now designate the Washington Council FFI to receive a portion of the value of every dollar they spend with the online retailer. The company shares 0.5% of the purchase price with the charity of your choice at no cost to you. We are asking members to designate the Washington Council of Fly Fishers International as their preferred charitable organization. Then when you shop at Amazon, the company will donated a portion of whatever you spend to Washington FFI. If you spend $100 at Amazon, Washington FFI will get 50 cents. Amazon will disburse the Amazon Smile proceeds to the Washington Council every quarter and we will report the amounts we receive in every newsletter. 

   So that’s the plan friends. We are a non-profit and we have non-profit partners that rely on us to help them deliver service to friends in need. We’ve been there to help them for more than a decade. Join our new online auction and Amazon Smiles program to help uphold our mission to conservation, education and community.