Ed: Donors and Donations

Yesterday I made our first deposit of the donations we've received from generous supporters of our upcoming run. There will be more deposits before we start our run August 5th.

I tend to get a little reflective from time-to-time, and yesterday was one of those days.

Being part of raising money for St. Jude, part of funding hope for sick children, has been a bit of journey for me. This isn't dropping a dollar in the Salvation Army pot during the Christmas season. This has required some time, certainly some energy, and a little humbleness to solicit our friends, family, and strangers for money during these tight times.

In a few weeks, it will put a physical demand on all the runners who will participate in this wonderful cause.

Kathleen and I were talking about it last night. Runners have been training and preparing for this---it will be difficult no doubt--but we suspect there is not a single parent of a St. Jude patient who wouldn't trade places with us in a second if it meant their child did not require the kind of care St. Jude offers. I can't even begin to imagine the heartbreak--and hope--that these parents and children go through.

Gathering up the manila envelope with the donations we've so far received, I headed out to the bank to make a deposit for St. Jude Runners. I got thinking about that envelope, what was in it, and what it meant.

The hours spent preparing the donation requests entailed writing a letter, hand-writing each address, stamping the reply envelope, stamping the outside envelope, and getting it off in the mail. Each donation represented somebody else having to take the time to write a check, and send the envelope back to us. "Thank You!" notes are written and mailed back. There were donations of all amounts, large and small. Almost all donations that, in the eye of the donor, were "small" had a hand-written note apologizing that it was not more. I wish I could convey the deep appreciation we had for EACH donation...no apologies necessary.

That little manila envelope represented so much. There was a lot of love, care, and energy stored up in there. And hope.

So I got to the bank, and filled out a couple of deposit slips. We had more checks than the line-by-line listing allowed, so it required a bit to get it all organized. Frankly, I kept screwing it up, and had to fill out more than a couple of deposit slips. I would add it up wrong, or I miscounted the checks, or something. It was always something. But, I finally had something I was convinced was accurate--and stood in line to make the deposit.

Approaching the counter, I described what the event was all about (got a lot of approving nods from customers and tellers alike), and handed over the donations and deposit slips. The helpful teller noted the total from the slips, made some sort of entries into the computer, printed out the receipt, and handed it to me with her good wishes. She did not count, nor verify what I gave her...I was a bit astounded, particularly with my gnashing of teeth with my ineptness in filling out those slips correctly the first time.

"Don't you count and verify the checks??" I asked her with my head askew.

"Nope. They all get batch run through a computer reader, any errors will be corrected later" was her reply.

Huh.

So in the end, all these donations were treated as one big total. The computer, sans emotion, will dutifully record each one without pausing to think about the meaning of each individual amount--large or small. The computer won't fret about the value of the individual donation...but that total amount will join others as they come in from all over. I left the bank satisfied as I realized that although I brought individual donations from our friends and family--what really counted was that we were, each of us in our own way, helping those children at St. Jude.

All donations count toward the total at the end. No apologies needed.

Today's video: