One of the most important things I learned through my internship is how hard it can be to help people. I worked for a small HIV organization with no full time employees, just an executive director, sexual health and harm reduction coordinator, and summer coordinator. The small capacity of the organization and the fact that it gets funding from the government to work in four communities for the price of one means that the summer coordinator spends those four sunny months FUNDRAISING. The main goal of fundraising is obvious, but the organization must also increase awareness of sexual health issues and promote itself in the process. I was fortunate enough to have been charged with the organization’s “biggest fundraiser,” a joint event with another HIV organization in the Rockies and part of the Mountain Movement. The fundraiser is a one day event in which servers in establishments around town donate at last 50% of their tips on that day. Half the money goes to our organization, and the other half to the Stephen Lewis Foundation which works with AIDS orphans and grandmothers in sub-Saharan Africa.
I spent a few weeks visiting restaurants and trying to get them on board, and eventually recruited volunteers because the job was just too big for one person. Our organization functions solely with the help of volunteers in the community. I was told to be “pushy” and “not take no for an answer.” This is not my forte but I tried my best and did get rather overbearing with a certain Korean restaurant. I ended up doing most of the leg work on this one, visiting some of the restaurants three or four times. Each time the server would say. “What is it? No I don’t know anything about it.” The week before we got a commitment out of whichever restaurants were participating so that we could advertise for them by placing their names in an ad encouraging people to dine at their establishments on that day. We had beautiful posters printed, volunteers create AIDS ribbons for the servers to wear, and cards to go on the tables to inform diners of the event and where the money was going.
The day of the event, I went for lunch at one of the restaurants only to find they did not have any of the posters up, and when I asked my server she said, “Oh is that today?” I ran around all day trying to figure out why some of the restaurants weren’t participating, if we’d forgotten to give promotional materials to some. The next week we spent trying to collect the money we realized that a number of the businesses that had committed didn’t participate because they hadn’t informed all of their staff, or they just plain ol’ forgot. It was so frustrating to have spent so much time and ensuring the smallest amount of work for the participants; all the restaurant had to do was put up posters in the morning and collect money. We printed expensive posters and newspaper ads aren’t cheap either. People went to restaurants and left large tips expecting them to be donated and they weren’t. Worst of all, we found out the biggest contributor from the year before was upset that we didn’t give them enough recognition for raising the most money!
There were lots of servers who did participate and did an amazing job, and we managed to raise almost $5000. So no, it was not a bust. I did learn a lot though. I learned you do have to be pushy, and that you need to go to the source and not talk to management about what you do, just ask for forgiveness later. I learned that not everyone thinks your idea is as good as you do, and that making something easy doesn’t mean people are going to do it. And always give them an award.