Fundraising Activities Quotes

The work I do is not exactly respectable. But I want to explain how it works without any of the negatives associated with my infamous clients. I’ll show how I manipulated the media for a good cause. A friend of mine recently used some of my advice on trading up the chain for the benefit of the charity he runs. This friend needed to raise money to cover the costs of a community art project, and chose to do it through Kickstarter, the crowdsourced fund-raising platform. With just a few days’ work, he turned an obscure cause into a popular Internet meme and raised nearly ten thousand dollars to expand the charity internationally. Following my instructions, he made a YouTube video for the Kickstarter page showing off his charity’s work. Not a video of the charity’s best work, or even its most important work, but the work that exaggerated certain elements aimed at helping the video spread. (In this case, two or three examples in exotic locations that actually had the least amount of community benefit.) Next, he wrote a short article for a small local blog in Brooklyn and embedded the video. This site was chosen because its stories were often used or picked up by the New York section of the Huffington Post. As expected, the Huffington Post did bite, and ultimately featured the story as local news in both New York City and Los Angeles. Following my advice, he sent an e-mail from a fake address with these links to a reporter at CBS in Los Angeles, who then did a television piece on it—using mostly clips from my friend’s heavily edited video. In anticipation of all of this he’d been active on a channel of the social news site Reddit (where users vote on stories and topics they like) during the weeks leading up to his campaign launch in order to build up some connections on the site. When the CBS News piece came out and the video was up, he was ready to post it all on Reddit. It made the front page almost immediately. This score on Reddit (now bolstered by other press as well) put the story on the radar of what I call the major “cool stuff” blogs—sites like BoingBoing, Laughing Squid, FFFFOUND!, and others—since they get post ideas from Reddit. From this final burst of coverage, money began pouring in, as did volunteers, recognition, and new ideas. With no advertising budget, no publicist, and no experience, his little video did nearly a half million views, and funded his project for the next two years. It went from nothing to something. This may have all been for charity, but it still raises a critical question: What exactly happened? How was it so easy for him to manipulate the media, even for a good cause? He turned one exaggerated amateur video into a news story that was written about independently by dozens of outlets in dozens of markets and did millions of media impressions. It even registered nationally. He had created and then manipulated this attention entirely by himself.

The times do not call for grassroots political activism, as if the next election might be enough to reverse a massive cultural earthquake. They do not call for working just a little bit harder: a few more speeches, another letter to the editor, another fundraiser, the next vote, the next committee meeting. These noble efforts aren't even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic; they are tending the seaweed on its watery grave. The times call for a new generation of book hunters. Like the book hunters of the Middle Ages, the new book hunters take it as their mission to uncover and salvage the best of what came before: to cherish it; hold it up for praise and emulation; study it; above all, to love it and pass it on.

It was the missionaries who became the brave storm troopers of Christianity, slashing their way through jungles, going where no one had gone before. Mission was now reserved for work among the unreached nations and no longer simply happened next door or around the corner. But the churches that had outsourced their missionary activity to the mission societies tended to drift languidly into the role of fund-raiser for the mission societies. This dilemma was seriously exacerbated when, after World War II, a number of parachurch societies, mainly aimed at reaching young people, were formed. These included Youth for Christ, the Navigators, Campus Crusade for Christ, and so on, and were aimed at reaching students and teens right under the noses of existing churches. Once again, mission was outsourced to specialist agencies, leaving the local church focused primarily around pastoral issues and Sunday worship. Not only did this create the great stepchild, the parachurch, it crippled the church’s witness beyond the Sunday gathering. And again, given the significant cultural effect of the postwar baby boom, we understand the historical reasons why such specialization of local mission occurred. But it only deepened the cleft between missionary activity and church activity. Again, long before all this happened, Roland Allen was deeply concerned. We may compare the relation of the societies to the Church with the institution of divorce in relation to marriage. Just as divorce was permitted for the hardness of men’s hearts because they were unable to observe the divine institution of marriage in its original perfection, so the organization of missionary societies was permitted for the hardness of our hearts, because we had lost the power to appreciate and to use the divine organization of the Church in its simplicity for the purpose for which it was first created.[155] In the end Allen himself despondently capitulated to this great divorce, concluding that “the divine perfection of the Church as a missionary society cannot be recovered simply by abolishing the missionary societies, and saying, let the Church be her own missionary society.”[156] Maybe not in 1926, but today there is an increasing unease with this “divorce” between mission and church. Allen was ahead of his time. He forecast the situation we now find ourselves in—with missionless churches and churchless missions, and neither one being all it should be. We contend that the whole missional church conversation was one that the church has been building toward for over a century. And now is the time to have it. A new generation of young Christians is desperate for the adventure of mission. They were raised in the hermetically sealed environment of missionless church, and those who have emerged with their faith still intact are hungry for the risk and ordeal that only true missional activity can offer.

This capitalist mentality was evidenced also in the fact that these co-ops did not participate in cooperative social movements and were formed purely for the sake of providing employment to members. They had no strong ideological commitment to cooperation; they rarely even linked up with one another for political, economic or ideological reasons. Each enterprise was simply “one big family” (with the exception of the hired labor) united against a hostile outside world.196 As mentioned earlier, therefore, it is important that co-ops maintain a connection with social movements if their cooperative identity is not to erode. No great social change will happen if cooperatives simply speckle the economic landscape atomistically, even if there are quite a few of them; they have to actively spread their ideology, spawn new co-ops, maintain ties with the labor movement, fundraise continually, help agitate politically for grants and favorable legislation, look to progressive social experiments being undertaken in other parts of the world and learn from them or contribute to them. Besides, it is likely that the more connections they have with each other, the smaller is the possibility that they will fail economically.

Rather than merely identifying entrepreneurs and monitoring them, as Rock had done, the new venture capitalists actively shaped them: they told company founders whom to hire, how to sell, and how to structure their research. And to ensure that their instructions were implemented, the new venture capitalists came up with a second innovation: rather than organizing one large fundraising, they doled out capital in tranches, with each cautious infusion calibrated to support the company until it reached an agreed milestone. If the 1950s had revealed the power of liberation capital, and if the 1960s had brought the equity-only, time-limited venture fund, the advances of the 1970s were twofold: hands-on activism and stage-by-stage finance.

This focus on changing individual behavior and defining public health problems from an individual perspective shifts blame and accountability away from corporate action (or inaction). Yet, corporate activity and government deregulation have had enormous impacts on the public’s health” (p. 14)

So here we are today, where we have toxicologists and experts in food safety who disagree with the AHA’s position on the safety of polyunsaturated fats, and, because the AHA’s vast influence gives it control over nutrition thought, these professionals have trouble getting necessary work funded. Meanwhile, the AHA continues to actively promote seed oils, and it continues to support those, like Dr. Walter Willett, who dismiss or discredit experts like Dr. Chris Ramsden who are producing evidence to the contrary. In other words, the AHA is effectively blocking progress in medical science, and, perhaps most egregiously, it is promoting a diet that’s actively harming our cardiovascular health. In the beginning, however, the association’s culture was very different. When the AHA was founded in 1924, it was supported only with annual dues from a small collection of doctors concerned about the growing problem of heart disease. Heart attacks skyrocketed after World War I, and the organization felt the pressure of knowing there was so much to learn but such little funding to do the necessary research. In 1942, AHA executive director H. M. “Jack” Marvin, a New Haven, Connecticut, cardiologist, made an ambitious proposal to solve the AHA’s “chronic fiscal problems.” Lack of funds stood in the way of two of the organization’s highest-priority goals: sponsoring research and establishing public health and lay education programs. Without fundraising, the organization would be limited to utilizing the small pool of government funds to achieve its goals. And that pool had just grown a little too crowded for the AHA’s tastes.

Back in Libya, Obama recklessly neglected the duty of a president and commander in chief to protect Americans serving overseas, a negligence that included the shocking failure to take responsive action while Americans were under a terrorist siege in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. The president, whose White House has refused to account for his whereabouts and activities during the hours of the Benghazi attack, was evidently busy preparing for the Las Vegas political fundraiser he flew off to the next day.

The Church also seems to be in the social service business, the counseling business, the fundraising business, the daycare business-dozens of the same worthy businesses the secular world is also in. Why? What justifies these things? The Church's ultimate end for all these things is different from the world's end; it is salvation. This is its distinctive "product." Why put out a product that is just the same as other compa- vies' products already on the market? Why would anyone expect such a product to sell? That's why modernist or liberal Christianity, charitable as its services are, is simply not selling. The only reason for any of the Church's activities, the only reason for the very existence of the Church at all, is exactly the same as the reason Jesus came to earth: to save poor and lost humanity.

Where?’ ‘What?’ Mrs Partridge coughed. She probably had an afternoon she wanted to get on with. He continued. ‘There was some discussion over lunch – a variety of opinions were expressed and a challenge offered.’ He breathed heavily. I was enjoying myself so much that I gave no thought as to where all this might be leading me. ‘It would appear that last year, during a week of fund-raising activities, the University of Thirsk enjoyed considerable

During: ●   Meals: Fundraising in the time of Zoom is an even more intense experience. It can be difficult to carve out enough time to get out of your house, or even away from your computer, for a proper meal. I suggest doing meal prep or planning every Sunday. Meals should be light and calorically restricted to keep your mind and body active — you shouldn’t bring any afternoon grogginess to a pitch because you ate a burger for lunch. ●    Exercise: Add blocks to your calendar to carve out exercise time. Getting your blood pumping and providing an alternative to staring at your own face on Zoom is key to providing context and awareness. Exercise helps reset the body and the mind. ●    Emotional support: A great fundraise is still an experience in rejection (seriously, most meetings result in a “no”). Make sure you have a weekly check-in with someone (not your cofounder) who can help rationalize and normalize this crazy process. ●        Breaks: Schedule time to take breaks. Watch a movie. Take a hike. Go swimming. Do something to get your mind off the fundraise for at least 30 minutes every day. ●      Meditating: There is nothing in this world that I believe in more than meditation. I started meditating twelve months ago, and since then have nearly 10X’d our business. It’s never too late to start!

Perhaps trellis work has taken over from vine work. There are committees, structures, programs, activities and fundraising efforts, and many people put lots of time into keeping them all going, but the actual work of growing the vine falls to a very few.

GIVING A VOICE “Julian Starks compassionately depicts animals who can only dream of the life they may have had if not for the thoughtless and cruel behavior of humans. We hope his beautiful images will inspire people to get active in whatever ways they can to help wildlife, from boycotting circuses with animal acts to refusing to have their photos taken with tiger cubs while on vacation. From talented photographers like Julian who document animals' plight to families who take the time to educate themselves before they buy that ticket, we can all make a difference for animals.