It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. Having spent majority of my time over the past six or seven months focusing on internet fundraising, I haven’t had much time to finish the blog posts that I’ve been building up from my random musings and observations.
That said, today I was leaving work and a fundraiser (of a charitable organization that will be remain undisclosed) approached me as I was walking to the subway station. He attempted to stop me and I simply informed him that I was in a hurry. He then posed an intriguing question to me:
What if I told you that I was helping people and that all I need is 30 seconds of your time?
I actually stopped to respond to him to discuss that idea further, but just as I explained that if I had more than 30 seconds, rather than listening to me — he simply told me not to worry about it and have a nice day … and then proceeded to attempt to find another donor. Now is that any way to treat a potential donor? If we are to engage people to encourage and inspire them to contribute, volunteer or even take action — we definitely need to understand that there are multiple perspectives and approaches to how we as individuals want to help or make a difference.
Similarly and interestingly enough, the Globe and Mail published an article by Lawrence Martin today that points fingers at the youth for the lack of political inspiration. Isn’t it easy to make assumptions that points to a mere small factor for our country’s political woes?
The young reject the political status quo, as they should, but they are too lazy to do anything about it. Most of the under-25s don’t even bother to vote. Instead of fighting for change, they wallow in their vanities and entitlements. Not much turns them on except the Idol shows, movies with smut humour and the latest hand-held instruments. Their disillusionment with the political class is understood. Their complacency isn’t. It will soon be their country. You’d think they’d want to take the reins. – Lawrence Martin, Globe and Mail
Ignoring that our education system continues to fail to engage young citizens on the history of the diverse Canadian landscape; that our political system continues to produce stable yet rather bland governments; that much of the political agendas continue to alienate what concerns the young adults who are able to vote; that people have generally lost faith in many of our provincial and federal government institutions and their inability to tackle a problem — is an attempt to avoid acknowledging the fact that many individuals have now focused on what they can contribute towards and actually see progress and results. Results that they want to achieve without dealing with the political ideologies that have been tossed back and forth.
“If you don’t like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it. You just do it one step at a time.” – Marian Wright Edelman
I’d go to the extent of arguing that the lack of political inspiration isn’t about laziness, vanities or entitlement, it is about relevance or context, and requires a more effective method of engagement than patronizing marketing campaigns by Elections Canada.
Same goes for fundraising, it takes more than simply 30 seconds of chatting with someone to encourage them to invest their time and energy into your cause. It is a democratic society after all that we live within and simply blaming the younger generation for not understanding the importance of issues that just aren’t relevant to them really makes us just as bad for not understanding them and seeing the world through their eyes — especially when we should know better through time and experience.
