When have you used an inventive method to stretch company resources beyond the normal level?

"My Community Outreach team was tasked with organizing a special event to encourage greater involvement from the neighborhood surrounding our headquarters. Although we serve several clients in the area, we did not have many opportunities for our neighbors to volunteer. So, we worked together to organize a simple neighborhood cleanup event. The 2,000 I received was intended to pay for tools, gloves, and eye protection, but I was able to procure those items for free from our local City Beautiful group. As a result, I was able to use that 2,000 to purchase commemorative t-shirts for our volunteers and offer catered lunch."

"When I was Chief Operating Officer of my previous organization, we had a transitional housing program, where we would house families in homes we owned while we sought permanent housing solutions with them. We owned seven homes and could house seven families at a time who stayed for an average of two months before finding permanent housing. I realized that, between mortgages, utilities, and taxes on the home, we were spending more money than if we simply helped these families pay for a down payment on their own home from the start. So, we sold the homes, used that funding to boost our programs, and were able to serve double the amount of families than we were able to previously."

Show how creative you can be with scant resources. Share the budget and/or resources you had available to you and how you were able to turn that into organizing an incredible event, developing an effective fundraiser, making a necessary purchase to support your team's work, etc.