Dear Friends,
Late this summer, Phileena and I visited a couple WMF communities in South America. While in Argentina, Dave Bayne (WMF Buenos Aires staff), reflecting on all our social media activity asked, “You guys having a hard time raising support up there?”
It’s true. The difficulties experienced by many because of the economy have also impacted several of our WMF staff members.
If you’ve been following any of our WMF Omaha community’s tweets (Twitter), Facebook accounts or blogs, then you’ve probably noticed a lot of creative energy being spent on fund-raising for our office staff this year.
The list of creative and collaborative efforts includes:
- Daphne’s “No Hawk/Mohawk” Campaign: Gifts counted as votes for and against her getting a mohawk. Fortunately for her, more gifts came in designated “nohawk” and her head barely escaped the wrath of electric clippers.
- Hilary’s “Service Auction”: The biggest donor/highest bidder bought 20 hours of Hilary’s time to help cut the grass, clean the house or whatever the winner needed help with.
- The Anchor & Braille Benefit Show: Stephen Christian, the lead singer of Anberlin, generously stopped in Omaha to gift a performance of his solo project, Anchor & Braille as a fund raiser for WMF.
- The WMF Dance Party: Complete with a local DJ and a team of break dancers to keep the vibe hip and alive, the Administrative Team threw a dance party fund raiser. Someone actually called to police who promptly showed up to the party and kindly let us off the hook.
- Mandy’s Photo Show: Our dear Mandy Mowers, “publicator” (at least, that’s what I call her) and Esther Knicley (WMF volunteer) had an opening of photos they’ve taken and processed. The display featured a gorgeous series of original photographs and actually sold quite a few pictures.
- Amanda and Silas’s Momo Dinner: Momos are a traditional Tibetan meal, Amanda and Silas prepared over 700 and had a big dinner party as a way of helping fund their roles.
- The Inaugural WMF Push-Up Contest/Push-Up-A-Thon: We actually raised almost $700 during this one. The contest pitted departments against each other for a team total averaged out by participants. This little event was webcast live, drawing viewers from literally all over the world. You can see the video on my blog if you missed it.
As you can imagine, we’ve had a lot of fun trying to come up with imaginative ways to help fund our positions. Thankfully the economy has spurred a great deal of creativity around here. It’s also created a good deal of stress as well.
And, to be honest, the success (or lack of success) of these creative fund-raising attempts hasn’t been what we hoped. Sadly, we did lose a couple WMF Omaha staff members who were unable to generate and sustain their support. The marginal increase in giving towards our Omaha staff accounts really helped a few of us get through the summer months, but as we face the end of the year many of us still need to raise considerable amounts just to break even for 2009.
Phileena and I ourselves have had a few pretty thin months of giving and have a little bit of catching up ourselves. As 2009 comes to an end, Phileena and I humbly ask you to consider giving a little extra to help us finish the year the strong.
On the upside, as we look into 2010, there are some really exciting things we can’t wait to announce (stay tuned, you won’t want to miss out on these exciting developments).
Thanks for all the prayers you’ve offered on our behalf and for all the gifts you’ve made to keep us involved in WMF.
Our prayers are with you,
Chris