A bump of $1.2 million for the Ronald McDonald House over the weekend wasn’t the work of some mysterious donor.
It was just a bureaucratic lag in formally recognizing donations, said Central Alberta Ronald McDonald House capital campaign chairwoman Lyn Radford, in explaining how the campaign went from $4.5 million raised Friday to $5.7 million by Monday.
“There wasn’t any $750,000- or $1-million donor, but there would be several $100,000 ones, though,” Radford said Monday.
Radford said she was feeling “a lot” of pressure, since the campaign now has only about 45 days to make the $8-million mark. That’s 80 per cent of the total cost of $12 million and the funding level required by the Ronald McDonald House Charities before work can begin on one of their projects.
Campaign organizers have known for several months that they had to push up their ground-breaking from June to March, since the slope of the land they’re building on requires the earth to be a bit frozen.
Still, Radford is confident they’ll make it.
“This community always seems to come through, so I’m really thinking it will at least get very close to it,” she said.