You totally made his month.
My best friend’s pride and excitement spilled out of her voice. With ebullience she told me how her boyfriend nearly cried he was so pleased and surprised: All three of the art pieces he’d done for the Ride for World Health (R4WH) Silent Auction fundraiser had been bid upon with great interest.
About a month prior, we’d all been making dinner together when I decided to have an auction. My magnificent friends immediately started volunteering what they could each contribute. Art, note cards, home-delivered dinners, winery tours, and jewelry poured forth from the hearts of my friends towards the R4WH and Doctors without Borders.
This was my first experience with fundraising. I’d signed on without considering the task of raising $2,500—in all it’s many dollars. Being someone who generally has a tough time asking for help from others enhanced the challenge of it. My default is to feign easy independence and to manage on my own, but this kind of endeavor wasn’t going to succeed on a one-woman island.
So I opened up. I flirted with stringing together such audacious words as: “Could you” and “support” and “me” all in the same sentence. The dog didn’t think it was too unreasonable a question, so I tried it on my mom, cousin, yoga studio and bike shop. The more I asked the more I realized that people and businesses were genuinely interested in the cause and even interested in contributing—in giving. In an unprecedented shift, I settled in to the role of Receiver: letting my community support me. Giving others the opportunity to give and graciously accepting their nourishing generosity.
The morning of the auction, which was to take place at my medical school’s hospital, I woke up nervous and excited. A long month of organizing and asking for donations was to come to fruition. Several of my friend’s has volunteered to work shifts with me and several more had obliged my request to bake for the 2nd-thought bake sale addition to the auction.
By 11:45am, scones, cookies, tarts, brownies and delicious breads were descending upon the goody table along with donated coffee. I set up my iPOD speakers and Buena Vista Social Club set the auction to a festive mood. The chaos of set-up seamlessly settled as friends dropped by to lend a hand. Before we knew it bids were being placed and friends who are not even doing the ride were explaining it to people stopping by.
My medical school years passed before me in front of the auction tables; surgeons and pediatricians and nutritionists and family doc’s came to show their support and pick up a treat. Portland’s bicycle culture rang true as one person after another inquired with enthusiasm about my training, the terrain and the ride. Numerous Doctor’s without Borders stories were shared by people who’d worked with them or who’d known people who had.
The day was so full of good conversations that when my friends arrived for the last couple of hours shift I could hardly believe it—nor that I’d forgotten to eat breakfast and lunch. I’m not generally the type.
The traffic wound down some and my three friends and I looked out over the five tables full of awesome auction items that my Portland community had donated: winery tours, coffee, yoga classes, bike tune-ups, gift cards, gift certificates to bike shops and restaurants, jewelry, an oil painting by my mom, and mixed media and wood block art pieces!!! A landscape of support.
A few people came by in the eleventh hour and we crowned them the winner of some items—sending them home with their gift boxes or painting! Between the four of us we cleaned up by 6:11 pm. By 7 pm we’d reconvened at our favorite bar for a celebratory round. Highlights and stories from the day were retold with enthusiasm, and the gratitude in my heart swelled to prolific proportions. As we sat there all together I felt like the luckiest person on earth. I had the sense that we were all a little aglow; aglow with the grace of community and generosity and our own shared experience of Margaret Mead’s sentiments: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”