The Most Pathetic Story I’ve Heard
No sooner had I finished reading Tom’s post — The Greatest Story Ever Told — than the phone rang with an irritated U.K. reader at the other end. ( I think the Brits refer to this state as ‘in high dudgeon’.)
No, he wasn’t complaining about Tom’s post. Rather, in a tone signaling 1/3 incredulity, 1/3 anger and 1/3 outright dismay, he reported the following.
A close friend of his who does communications and marketing got in touch with one of the infinite number of health charities in the U.K.
Seems that the very major automaker his friend represented wanted to partner with this charity.
“So what?” I thought to myself. But then my 5 a.m. caller (The Agitator never sleeps) read me the text message his friend had just sent:
“Spoke to the charity’s PR person and I’m thinking they’d be happy to talk about something this big with Brand X. To my utter surprise she says ‘just put your idea in an email and we’ll take a look at it’. Unbelievable, utterly pathetic, one of the largest car companies in the world and a pissant charity blows us off with a request for an email!!!”
I’m not thrilled by the term ‘pissant’, but the point remains. Who do you have answering your nonprofit’s door when opportunity comes knocking?
Roger
One response to “The Most Pathetic Story I’ve Heard”
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That’s nothing. I know of a much more painful, true story. About 15 years ago, the widow of a famous tycoon wanted to make a gift to PBS, the nonprofit TV network. Her lawyer phoned PBS. Folks at PBS at that time were unable to ever accept donations from anyone, because local PBS member stations (who dominate the PBS board of directors and fully control PBS) wanted it that way. They never wanted PBS to “compete” in any way against its own member stations. So under those rules at the time, nobody at PBS was allowed to even engage with the widow’s lawyer. In the end, neither PBS nor its local member stations got any of the widow’s gift. She gave it all to NPR instead. (When her lawyer phoned NPR, there was someone empowered to talk to the lawyer, and a mechanism for NPR to accept the gift.) This was not a small gift. NPR used the gift to create an endowment that delivers millions of dollars to NPR every year, thereby greatly benefiting NPR and its local member stations, not to mention the many tens of millions of loyal NPR listeners. PBS and its local stations lost out completely. Moral of the story: “Don’t be a total *$%#@ idiot.”