Roller Coaster Day

Today was one of those roller coaster days. It started off a little rocky- I was working on auction items (as I do everyday) and encountered an absolutely obnoxious woman- I had called a local small bakery and I didn't even get to say who I was or what we needed the gift certificate for, when the woman yells down the phone, "I'm the owner and I'm not donating anything" and hangs up the phone. Her rudeness was jarring, particularly since that was my first call of the day. While I don't expect a gift certificate donation from every business I call and heck knows we don't get them- I do expect a level of professional courtesy from one business to another. The thing that also amazed me with this woman was here was a small business- I had never heard of it before researching more local businesses to contact- so it is a marketing opportunity for her to reach people that also may have never known her company. For $15 or $20, she can reach over a hundred people at the event, plus all the people who will be checking out our auction list online before the event. She'll have a new client when the auction winner visits her bakery- and if the bidder likes her items, she'll get new customers through word of mouth. Anyways, enough on that issue. Safe to say, I will not be spending money at her establishment.

After that interaction, it took a minute or two before I got back on the horse and made another phone call. My next call to another local business- Milford Curves- was successful and I picked up a gift certificate for a 2 month membership. Things went downhill again on the calendar front when I found out that Polar won't be on board for our 2009 calendar- they had sponsored for the last two years. So that was really disappointing. I kept making my calls and was able to line up more calendar sponsors which made things somewhat better, although we are no where near done with the calendar ads.

The day ended on an upnote with our newest platinum sponsor for the Anniversary Celebration- we don't have the check yet, so I don't want to say who it is, but it was a relief to have them on board. Also, another small business in Milford said they would do a $50 donation and a local jewelry store that I had been debating about calling said they'd donate an item. I also called a few other local businesses and did get a positive response. So things got better today which was great, especially since it wasn't much of a start. I need to keep working on reaching small local businesses for $50 donations for our anniversary event. I think that if I work on reaching 4 businesses a day, like I do with our auction items, we can actually do really great raising sponsorship money for the event. Since we are off with grant money, we need to make it up with this event, particularly since it is a milestone for us.

I need to get back reaching out to police and fire departments tomorrow, I've been so focused on calendar and anniversary event sponsors, I ran out of time to make those calls. Also, need to sort out details for the date auction- there are still some out standing issues that need to be resolved. That should get taken care of this week, I'll let you know.

Well, that's the story for tonight. I was a little annoyed with myself tonight because I got home early from a meeting and there was a ton of stuff that I could have done tonight- work stuff, office clean up or even do some reading or a few other things- but instead I felt tired, watched tv and fell asleep for an hour- woke up and was annoyed at wasting the evening. But anyways, I also need to figure out what's going on with my laptop. It's networked with my desktop- so I can access my PS stuff, but then I noticed tonight that if the desktop is switched off, I can't access the Project Smile files on my laptop. Need to call tech support tomorrow to get that one straightened out.

Now off to write my list and back to sleep. Until tomorrow..