SoS Week 5

This week at HUM I conducted my first and last real marketing campaign. Mark, HUM’s director of marketing and development, tasked me with “cold calling” on local businesses in order to obtain donations for our annual Golfin 4 Homeless Prevention golf tournament. I drove to various restaurants in Port Orange, Daytona, and Ormond Beach to inform the managers/owners about HUM and the golf tournament and to ask if they would be willing to donate raffle prizes.

I have never done anything like this before, but it was a great learning experience. I set a personal goal for myself of getting 15 donations, but by Thursday afternoon I had only received 14. However, on Friday when I began to create a spreadsheet of the donations I had collected, I discovered that I had in fact achieved my goal of getting 15 donations! It seems lame, but this was super exciting for me. I loved the competitive nature of trying to reach my goal. Plus, as Mark explained to me, I make a pretty good salesperson. He also told me that what I did this week was a huge blessing to HUM.

The best part of visiting local businesses, however, was getting to see some of our homeless guests in a setting other than the food pantry. I would walk up Beach Street in Daytona and run into various homies, as they call them at HUM, whom I have come to know over the past few weeks. It was so awesome being able to hold normal conversations with them like we were old friends. It is very apparent that most people completely ignore homeless people when they pass them on the street; I am proud to be a person who actually treats homies with the dignity they deserve. 

SN - I'm all caught up on my blogs. Yay!