BETHEL — Pulling off a week-long yard sale that features enough items to fill two football fields takes a unique kind of choreography.

The Bethel Rotary Club last week concluded concluded its annual sale, which raised more than $30,000 to support scholarships, grants to local nonprofits, and other causes.

Many sale-goers are aware that new items appeared under the tents every day, but may not realize that the collection effort for each sale begins right after the last one concludes.

Rotarian Scott Parker and a core group of club members that include Pat Roma, Mac McConathy, Scott Hynek and the club president (Richard Tummon this year) oversee the planning, pulling in other members along the way.

“Since the 2023 sale ended, we’ve made 160 pickups,” Parker said last week.

That means a truck makes the rounds of the SAD 44 community throughout the year as people call to offer donations ranging from furniture to kitchen items to toys to Christmas decorations.

Rotary has a loyal set of businesses and other nonprofits that connect people who have items to contribute with the club.

“The Chamber, the Food Pantry and District Exchange, Brooks Brothers, Western Maine Supply and local churches refer people to us all the time,” said Parker. He texts with the core group, and they head out on Tuesdays, along with other club members they may enlist at the weekly Rotary meetings, to gather items.

They take them to one of three large storage places in the area, which Parker estimates to be the combined square footage equivalent of two football fields.

The sale runs from Tuesday through Sunday the first week of August. On the Monday before, the scramble begins to load trailers and trucks to bring the items from storage to the sale location, outside the Chamber of Commerce and Gem Theater. An army of Rotarians and other volunteers work feverishly to truck in more items as the early ones are sold.

But that’s not all – people continue to donate as the sale is in progress, dropping off items mostly on Tuesday morning but also throughout the week. The crew also continues to pick up new donations from homes during the week. It’s a seemingly endless flow as Rotarians run back and forth to place things under the tents.

Despite the hard work, the movers tackle it with enthusiasm.

“I count the days until the sale’s beginning the way I used to count the days to Christmas when I was a little kid,” said Hynek.

That’s why it was a downer when he woke up Tuesday with COVID. He managed to drive his truck for one key delivery before going home to recuperate.

The crew has to be “nimble,” Parker said, to adapt to the unexpected. When Rotarian Robin Zinchuk noted that some tables with items had been placed too close to allow people in wheelchairs to navigate the layout, they were adjusted to make more space.

It was a tweak to a carefully mapped out arrangement of tables – literally. McConathy had drawn up, to scale, a map-like visual representation for the six large tents to be set up to accommodate the tables.

2020 nimble move

The week-long format of the sale was a relatively recent addition to the decades-old event. It had traditionally been held for one weekend in June at Telstar High School, coupled with an evening auction. But when the pandemic hit in 2020, the school and grounds closed. Then-President Lucy Abbott and her club were faced with a dilemma.

“Everyone had been home de-cluttering and was suffering from isolation, so we figured out the most contact-free way to restore the event,” she said. “We found the new site, which meant people could walk from town, and set an August date. To avoid the early-bird crowds on opening day, we made it 24-hour shop-when-you-want, and started selling as soon as items were put out.”

They also provided donation envelopes so people could send their money afterward, and eliminated pricing items to avoid face-to-face discussion.

“We grossed more than $14,000, with a target of $10,000,” said Abbott. “The honor system worked, and the community came through.”

The community has been coming through ever since, as the club stuck with the week-long format and the volume of sale items has grown, along with the money raised, each year.

“In the end, the donors, the shoppers, and Rotarians all participate in generating money for scholarships, youth programs, after-school activities and much more,” said Tummon.