The Fun in Fundraising

My job affords me so many opportunities to practice being an extrovert, something that does not come naturally.  I get to meet, mingle, schmooze, publicly speak, talk to the media, and ask people for money.  I enjoy it, but I do wonder how I ended up here instead of writing code on computers or crunching numbers for a living. 

But my chosen path requires that I at least pass at liking other humans and puts me in places where I must be entertaining, empathetic, and engaging (the three e's), even when my preference would be to sit quietly in a dark room.  Which, I do realize, would be very very sad, but it is the exact opposite of the experience I had last month.

My agency got a large grant from an organization called Impact Austin this past summer.  I was able to get this grant when I was at YouthLaunch, too.  As part of their outreach efforts to get new members (they are a membership organization of women who each give $1,000, which is then pooled and given out as 5 large grants each year), they ask their grant partners to come speak to small groups.  They schedule these meetings in current members' homes and invite 10-15 women to come over and learn about the organization.

I've done 10-12 of these meetings, so I felt fairly comfortable as I walked up the long driveway to the house at 6:30 that night.  Bounding up behind me was the pizza guy, delivering food for the meeting.  It happened that we both arrived at the door at the same time.  Me in my shirt and tie, and Pizza Guy in his pizza guy clothes.  I rang the doorbell and the host answered the door.

She said "Great! The pizza's here," and went off to get her checkbook.  When she got back to the door, she paid pizza guy, and he turned to leave back down the driveway.

I said to hostess "Hi, I'm Russell."

She nodded and said "OK." and turned back into the house.

I followed her in and shut the door.  A person from Impact Austin had come down from the kitchen to see if she needed help.  I had met this woman before.  I put my hand out to shake hers and said again, "Hi, I'm Russell Smith."

She shook my hand tentatively, said "uh-huh," and went back up the stairs up to the kitchen.

They knew I was coming.  I had met at least one of them.  But now I was standing alone in a stranger's house, having been mistaken twice as an overly friendly pizza guy, apparently from a company that sends not only the regular pizza guy, but some quality control guy in a suit along with him.  I couldn't just take their money and go home, which at that point would have been my preference, since actual pizza guy took the money.  And I couldn't even eat the damn pizza, since it had dissappeared to the kitchen.

So I went up to the kitchen and tried a third time.  There were four women there, and they all looked at me with puzzled expressions as I entered the room.  One had a slight "do I need to pull out the pepper spray?" quality to her look.

"Hi, I'm Russell Smith.  And I'm supposed to be speaking tonight."

That finally moved me from potentially-psychotic-yet-friendly pizza guy to non-profit executive who was invited and expected to be there.  Laughter ensued.