‘You’ve been schooled’

Last year, Sunnybrook Assisted Living & Memory Care in Mt. Pleasant raised money to “flush away” Alzheimer’s. This year, they are looking to “school” community members and businesses about Alzheimer’s.

Sunnybrook is circulating a purple desk around the area to raise money for Team Sunnybrook’s effort in the October Walk to End Alzheimer’s in Burlington.

“It stems off what we did last year,” Cody Flietner, marketing director at Sunnybrook, said. “We did the purple toilets, which were passed around to community members and community businesses.”

An old-fashioned school desk, painted purple, is placed in a yard or at a business. Then, people can pay to have it removed, with the money going to Team Sunnybrook.

They payment levels are:

• $10 to take away the desk.

• $20 to take away the desk and have it placed at a location of the payer’s choice.

• $30 to take away the desk, have it placed at a location of the payer’s choice and have insurance that the desk does not return to the payer.

“It makes it fun, especially if people don’t pay the insurance, and they get it back,” Flietner said.

Last year, Sunnybrook raised $6,300 circulating three purple toilets around the community.

“With COVID last year, a lot of our in-person fundraisers weren’t able to happen, so we had to think outside the box,” Flietner said. “We thought the toilets would be humorous, and we added the little pun, ‘You’ve been flushed.’

“This year, we wanted to do kind of the same scenario.”

Organizers considered doing the toilets again — one of the three survived last year’s fundraiser — but they decided to focus on something new.

“The school theme came to mind,” Flietner said. “We had somebody who donated a school desk, and we painted it purple. It’s one of the old-school desks that has the lid that lifts up.”

The desk contains a fact sheet about Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia and comes with a sign saying, “You’ve been schooled.”

“We just have the one desk right now, but if we run into the same scenario that we did last year, we have the opportunity to get another desk,” Flietner said. “We’re working on getting that as a backup.”

Flietner said that last year’s fundraiser was so popular, there was a waiting list.

He estimated that they moved the three toilets between 125 and 150 times collectively.

He admitted, though, that not everyone saw the humor with the toilets.

“We had a few people who didn’t get the humor of the toilets,” Flietner said. “We explained that it was a fundraiser — no harm, no foul.

“A lot of people assume that they have to make a donation to get it moved, but they don’t. It’s all in fun. We’re not forcing people to do the donation.”