Fundraising

Jordan has had an extraordinary series of learning experiences this week selling raffle tickets for the Northwest Boychoir. Last year we did this mostly door to door. Jordan was terrific at this: polite, charming, and reasonably informative. This photo is from last year, at a neighbor's house.

Though it is fun to go to your friends' houses, going door to door is very slow and not very lucrative. Very often no one is home, and very often people say no, and each house takes multiple minutes. Since Jordan is required to sell at least 75 raffle tickets (our family has to buy whatever he doesn't sell), we needed something more efficient. Last year I saw another Boychoir family using a system that seemed like total genius to me: The mom and her son were in front of Whole Foods, and the boy (in his Boychoir uniform) strolled around singing, and the mom had a little portable table with her iPad and a Square thingy to take credit cards, and a sign at the table said "Ask Me To Sing!" They appeared to me to be making money hand over fist. So I totally copied them. I got us a little portable table at a thrift store, and a Square reader, and put together a whole little setup. I got pretty excited.

Jordan was enthusiastic about the plan, but the first time we tried it did not go well at all. The whole thing was much more scary and embarrassing than he had anticipated. He hated it. He would not speak, he would not look at anyone, he hunched over, he did everything he could to disappear into the display of potted tulips behind him. I pep-talked him like crazy but he just dug in his heels. It was very unpleasant. For twenty minutes we were at an impasse. Here he is with the nifty setup, giving me his "I want to get out of here" look.

Then an angel descended in the form of a woman about my age. She saw exactly what was going on, walked right into Jordan's space, and said, "Hello! Are you selling raffle tickets? What are they for? What could I win? Are you in the boychoir?" She very pleasantly dragged him through his spiel, bought two tickets, and complimented the heck out of him. And that was exactly what he needed. He was unlocked. He would not sing, but he cheerfully pitched his pitch to a hundred people, and sold a nice little bunch of tickets, and went home happy.

The next time we tried it the weather was bad and there was competition from a grumpy homeless gentleman; we didn't stay long. Yesterday, though, the weather was good, we had all the time we needed, and Jordan had a great evening of sales. He learned to speak more loudly and to move up to people instead of being rooted in one spot. He observed that even though a lot of people say no, there are so many people that even if only a small fraction of them stop, he can sell a lot of tickets. He got a lot of practice hearing people say no, and instead of getting discouraged, just kept asking the next person. He honed his pitch. A super guy who was doing some fundraising across the street for another cause came over and actually coached him: he explained that people are more interested in the cause than in the raffle, so instead of saying "Would you like to buy a raffle ticket?" he advised Jordan to say "Help the Northwest Boychoir!" Jordan found that this absolutely worked, and was amazed, and very grateful. Another woman told Jordan that he was lucky to get a chance to develop these skills, because they were skills he would use all his life; she herself was a political organizer. Another man said he would love to contribute because he was in a boychoir himself (in San Francisco) and it was a huge influence on him; he is now a professor of music at UW. Another woman, the mother of a girl Jordan had waved over because he knew her from zoo camp, said Jordan was "such a gentleman, in those nice pants." Jordan was thrilled. He sold his whole minimum, and is eager to sell more (which will put money directly into our account for summer camp). Here he is at the end of our evening, feeling great about himself.

I felt great too. I felt like a spontaneous community of total strangers was rooting for him, some by buying tickets and some with other kinds of encouragement. We talked on the way home about how fantastic it was, that he could just ask people, and some of them were happy to help. I still think he would make a ton more money if he would sing! He says no; but maybe next time.