Mercer Island teen raises $16K for hurricane relief

Mercer Island High School student Albert Lam only set out to raise $200 for hurricane relief, but ended up raising $16,000.

Lam told 770 KTTH’s Jason Rantz he wanted to get involved after his mom’s friend lost her house to Hurricane Harvey.

“My mom asked me if I could imagine anything happening to my house like that, and I really couldn’t,” Lam said. “Their home is just gone. That’s when I decided I wanted to help.”

Lam decided he’d sell monogrammed pencils for five dollars each to try to raise money.

“It was August, the end of August, early September, it was back to school,” Lam said. “So I thought, okay, what would be something good that I could sell during that time? Pencils I could sell to students.”

Several donors offered more than the $5 pencil price, which was a major factor in Lam raising as much money as he did.

“I was lucky in that I was early and there were a lot of people who hadn’t donated yet in that area that donated to my cause,” Lam said.

His parents agreed to put up the money to purchase all the pencils so every purchase would go straight to his charity of choice, the Red Cross. There was one other tactic they used to make sure donors felt comfortable giving their money to a high school kid.

“Each and every person that donated, we have a receipt for them,” Lam said, “and of course, for the bigger donors that could be pretty meaningful in terms of tax deductions.”

Lam plans to continue his community service as a member of his high school’s Key Club chapter, and this experience made him more optimistic about future fundraising efforts.

“There’s always that initial fear, like, what if nobody supports this?” Lam said. “Really you just have to get over that and take the first step because there are a lot of good people out there who want to help.”

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