Quiet Day and Good News

Today was a relatively quiet day- I did some work this morning, but took the rest of the day off- following that advice from the business book that I read many years ago-the writer was a successful businessman and firmly believed in taking every holiday off and enjoying personal time. I know a lot of people don't have Veteran's Day off work, but I think it was fine not to work and spent quite a bit of time cleaning up and catching up on household things.

Two good things did happen today though- I received a phone call from a company in NY who are planning to donate 1,200 new stuffed animals to us. That was great news. I'm going to have them shipped to the warehouse space in Worcester because I don't have space for them here in Hopedale. It hasn't been finalized yet, I should be hearing back from them tomorrow.

In other cool news, I received a phone call from a writer who is going to be featured on the Today show next Wednesday, Nov. 19 and she is going to mention Project Smile on-air! How cool is that? Her name is Helen Coronato and she wrote a book called Eco-Friendly Families. Project Smile is mentioned in the index as a source for stuffed animal donations. She told me that she is going to mention Project Smile as an example of an oganization that gives new life to stuffed animals that children may have in their homes. So that was exciting news- I'm looking forward to watching it. Hopefully that will generate more traffic to our website and donations too. Helen said that she was going to be featured during the 8am hour.

Not much else new today. I've been working on trying to get the last group of auction items delivered and receive payment for them. It is a sizeable amount of money that is owed and it is getting a little frustrating. I'm also owned a portion of money from a date auction sponsor, so that will be tomorrow morning's first call of the day. I'm also waiting on another check relative to the Halloween event, but the company is very supportive and that should be coming soon. On the other side of the issue, I sold a silent auction item and haven't been able to deliver the auction item to the winner, because I'm having trouble connecting with the person holding the gift certificate. The winner has been patient and I appreciate that, but I don't like owing people things. I also don't like having to chase down auction winners to pay for their items and sponsors who, according to the installment plan we agreed on, should have had their check in before Sept. 19. I have a lot of things to do during the day, and I shouldn't have to spend so much time on this.

Anyways, enough on that subject- I'm off to write my list. Tomorrow, I have to finish a grant that is due on Friday and I'm doing a follow up donation to Newton Police and back to work on contacting more departments. Hopefully, I will also hear back from our board attorney- I've asked him to review the contract with the event planner. I did have some questions, so I'm anxious to hear what his opinion is. I'm definitely looking forward to working with the event planner, she has a lot of really good ideas.
Until tomorrow...