Pledge Central

I'm involved with something called the Capital Region Fair Trade Coalition, a loose association of groups and individuals working in Fair Trade in this part of the world.  To promote our work in a public-spirited kind of way, members of this Coalition contributed FT goodies to put together in five gift baskets to donate to the local public radio station, WAMC.  Today the baskets were offered as premiums in the station's June fund drive.

Now, I pretty much loathe the fund drive, when my favourite regular radio programming stops and is replaced by desperate on-air begging for as long as it takes to raise a million dollars to support the station.  However, since I do appreciate WAMC I have always thought I should probably do my bit and volunteer to man the phones sometime.  Today, with three other fair tradey friends, I finally did that.  And I have to say it was quite fun.

There were about twenty volunteers in the room (known as "Pledge Central"), with two presenters in there with us, broadcasting live.  Each volunteer had a phone, and they rang in rotation.  When my phone rang (which in all honesty was not that often over the course of two hours) I had to go through a pledge form with the caller and collect relevant details in a friendly manner.  And that was about it.  The rest of the time was spent chatting with the volunteers seated on either side of me, and enjoying freebies such as ear plugs and samples of topical pain relief (WAMC seems to know its constituent listeners and volunteers - not all of us the springiest of chickens, a bit prone to twinges of this and that). 

There was a five minute flurry of excitement for "team fair Trade" as the FT baskets went up for grabs.  They were popular and were quickly claimed at $100 a piece, so that was satisfying, especially as in the final 75 minutes of our shift there was a goal of raising $10,000, and amazingly the goal was reached - and we played a little part in that.