Fun on the Fund Drive

I was a guest on my local public radio station’s fund drive today. It was my second year, but as always I had a blast. I am sure it isn’t the same experience for everyone, but the time just flew by. I was ready to go another hour but they already had someone else lined up.

As a leader of a non-profit organization, these fund drives seem like such a win-win for both organizations. I was there offering tickets as premiums for membership and in return, I received the opportunity to raise awareness about my organization. I actually tried to be cognizant of how much I talked about us but the hosts kept feeding me lines opening new avenues of conversation.

I saw the whole experience as a game to see how I could turn something into a plug to become a member. The host commented on how adventurous and daring our programming was. Thanked her and talked a little bit about our philosophy and came back around and mentioned something to the effect of how supporters of the station were likewise adventurous and bold in that they were eager to consume programming that dealt with situations outside their daily experience.

I had been worried I would run out of things to say so I had prepared some notes in advance of my arrival making a connection between the tickets we were offering and the station. (Lead singer of a group voted among the distinctive voices of her country-the station is a distinctive voice in the community with few such alternatives–you can be a distinctive voice by declaring your support of the station.)

It turned out I need not have been so concerned. The program I was guesting on had fewer opportunities for pledge solicitations than the one I was on last year. I left the remaining tickets for the station to in future segments and then fed the host my notes so she could use them in future segments. No need for my ideas to go to waste, after all. (I have had interactions with her before so it the situation wasn’t akin to a waiter pitching his ideas to a film director.)

So I know this entry has mostly been about how cool and clever I am. I am, however, too lazy to make these same suggestions in a third person voice. “One should endeavor to be a gracious guest by preparing remarks that emphasize the desirability of becoming a member.”

Besides, I know that if I say I had fun playing word games, most of you will figure you are cleverer than me, (you aren’t by the way), and can do a much better job promoting your organization and membership to your public radio station and will help your local station in the (futile) attempt to do just that.

But in all seriousness, while I was sitting there waiting to go on air again, I starting thinking how much I wished there were other forums where the general public would direct their attention to hear arts people talk enthusiastically. There was an entirely different energy to our conversation than I have experienced at Q&As and performance talks. It might have just been the setting. Talking to each other without the immediate awareness of an audience likely changes the dynamics. If I could be sure I could translate at least some degree of the experience to our stage, I might consider asking the woman who hosted our segment to act as an interviewer for a show discussion.

Something for me to ponder.

Oh and if the idealism of helping out another non-profit in your community or playing clever word games isn’t motivation to go on a fund drive, how about economics. We saw a surge in ticket sales while I was on the air. One guy apparently drove to the theatre and began banging on my office door because he was afraid we would be sold out.

Hate Hazelnuts, Love Filberts

In an illustration of the power of language in branding and naming, while having coffee this weekend a friend and I started having a discussion where he stated how much he hated hazelnuts and really preferred filberts. I ran with the joke and solemnly agreed that hazelnuts were over exposed. Witness the hazelnut creamer and syrups available here in the coffee house. Another friend was still up at the counter when we started the conversation so when she sat down and heard us seriously discussing how filberts, which tasted amazing, were being marginalized by the hype about hazelnuts, she sort of got pulled in. We did clue her in to the fact we were talking about the same nut, but not until we had a discussion about how the hype about the benefits of acai was selling smoothies of dubious nutritional value at that coffeehouse.

Of course, we all know that language is used to make things sound less negative. Like how there are those who refer to the dangerous chemical, Dihydrogen Monoxide as Hydrogen Hydroxide because the latter sound less threatening. But a little research will show that it is widely used as an industrial solvent and coolant, in the production of Styrofoam and poisons. Even in small quantities, accidental inhalation can cause death.

Of course, there are always people who will be smart enough to see through attempts to mislead them. When it comes to promoting our events and our organizations, a careful balance must be struck. I am a big proponent of avoiding trite phrases like those excerpted from movie reviews for the purpose of advertising the film. Yet if your language is too lofty, you run to the risk of creating an appearance of elitism.

I had a situation this season when writing text for our brochure. I described a show where a man must confront an evil force which has subverted the souls of better men than he. I later mention him having to resist the fell forces. A professor suggested I change subvert and fell because the students wouldn’t understand what it meant. Setting aside most of the reasons I thought that statement was wrong, I ultimately decided to keep the language because 1) our students aren’t the target audience for the brochure anyway; it receives much more use by the post-college age general public. 2) I didn’t think that given our educational mission I should be dumbing down a word choice that wasn’t that challenging to start with and could be derived from the context of the sentence.

Just the same, my concern about having language that might alienate people and pose a barrier to attendance made me think about the situation for awhile.

#@$#^%$#@%$# SPAMMERS!

Well spammers recently co-opted a feature on our website for their own nefarious purposes. The result is, we have had to shut down a useful tool on our website until we can find a solution.

The feature enabled people to easily tell friends about a performance. A simple click of a link autofilled a form with the description text and a link to our events. It also allowed people to personalize the message with their own thoughts and remove our material entirely if they felt they could do the job on their own.

So you can probably see the opportunity for spamming. We recognized that it was open for abuse, including people looking to represent themselves as us, so we had all uses of the form blind copy us.

I had more than 4500 emails this morning. I was lucky there weren’t more, I am sure. Upon further investigation, we discovered that the measures we had put in place to thwart this sort of thing had been doing so quite well for some weeks now preventing spam from ever entering our mail queue. But the spammers found a way around it and so here we are being blacklisted by service providers.

This is quite annoying because while the feature wasn’t overwhelmingly successful, people did use it regularly to pass the word along to their friends. Now we have to find another method. Anyone have a suggestion? I imagine something with a RECAPTCHA challenge exists out there.

In the mean time, if you have a similar feature on your website but haven’t been monitoring its use, you may want to examine its recent activity.