Thursday, March 29, 2007

The Dark Side of Fundraising

I'm doing the walk for MS. We have a team and we're fundraising. This means we're acting under mafia principles. You go and shake down all your contacts. I've been stalking people on msn. I"m doing the hit and run. "Hey I'm fundraising, care to donate?" This has only so much success.

I'm calling in favours faster than you can blink. I'm getting nervous. I only have so much credit and then I'm going to be in the red and others are going to start calling in on me. I causally mentioned this to a fellow team-mate. I got one of those "This is for a good cause, you shouldn't be thinking about yourself" looks.

HAH!

My friends keep mental tally sheets. I'm getting pretty close to the end of my credit with some of them. They'll start calling in the favours soon. Normally this wouldn't be so bad except I know my friends. And you never know what will follow, "So I was wondering if you . . . ."

I cashed in some of my favours from undergrad with my eco study group - my eco boys. One of them promised to donate but the other coughed up the cash first. The first immediately wanted to know the amount. He then calculated how much help I'd given the second over our undergrad career, proportioned out how much help I'd given him and multiplied that by the amount. That was therefore how much he was going to donate. This was below the minimum donation I allowed him.

I remarked that calling in favours was making me nervous. He got it right away. This is why we studied together. "it's ok...your well isn't completely dry with respect to me. You can call in one more, so be wise." He then paused, "wait until you get arrested or something."

I'm waiting. He's my get-out-of-jail-free card. For real.

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