Quality!

A week or so before Christmas I received an email informing me that I was one of the employees recognized in our organization's quarterly customer service awards. I'd been recognized for outstanding "quality," specifically as it pertains to some training engagements I'd led.

I was pleased for the recognition, but I was even more pleased when a few days later I found out that I had my choice of gift cards from various merchants, amount not to exceed $100, as the organization's way of saying "thank you."

I poked through the list and wound up selecting a $100 gift card from Williams-Sonoma. I've somehow developed the idea that He Who Dies With The Most Baking Pans, Wins. The card came a week later and I promptly redeemed it on:

• A non-stick six-compartment pineapple upside down cake pan


• A non-stick shortcake pan


• A stuffed cornbread pan

I haven't used any of them yet because both Carole and I are watching our weight and trying to shed the few pounds we put on over the holidays, but one day soon I shall.

But I wonder -- am I the only man alive on the planet who's ever turned "being recognized for doing a good job" into "possessor of wacky baking pans?"

The best feeling ever

Spotted a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk?   Whoop!

Arrived at the airport late for your flight only to find that the flight's delayed and you'll easily make it after all?  Yeeha!

Put your last dollar down on 7 playing roulette -- and had 7 come up?  Awesome!

But none of these feelings can top the incredible, wonderful, ray-of-sunshine-on-a-cloudy-day feeling of opening your email and seeing a message with the subject line "A donation was made on your behalf".

When you sign up to walk in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day, you commit to raise a minimum of $2,300.  If you don't raise $2,300, you don't get to walk in the event.

Some of you might be thinking "Okay, so...?"  No one who's walked a 3-Day would say that, but if you're new to the event, or if you're merely an interested supporter or family member or friend of a walker, you might well be thinking that it'd be a good thing to miss out on a 3-Day.  No walking sixty miles, no sleeping in a tent, no widdling in portable toilets for three days.  WOO-HOO!  Right?

Right?

Bzzt!

If you've spent all summer training for a 3-Day -- walking five or six miles most weeknights, then walking eight, ten, fourteen, eighteen miles every Saturday and almost as many on Sunday -- you'd be beside yourself if all that training went for nothing because you didn't manage to raise the $2300.

To say nothing of how disappointed you'd be if you stood outside a Wal-Mart shaking a can asking for spare change, ran bake sales at the mall or library, emailed and wrote and called everyone you've been friends or even acquaintances with since, well, ever... and still came up short.

I've seen walkers in tears because after doing everything they could to raise funds they'd only raised, oh, $375 with two weeks to go until the walk.   You know those dreams we all have where we're back in high school and it's a week before graduation and you suddenly realize you've skipped this one class all year and aren't going to be able to graduate?   That dream is almost as bad as the feeling of being really, really, really short of your $2,300 goal with the 3-Day right around the corner.

A caveat: if you're short of $2,300, there is a way you can still walk -- you simply provide your own personal credit card and the Komen folks hit you for the difference.  It used to be that you could give a credit card and then have up to a month after the walk to make your target, but as of 2012, if you haven't raised enough by the week of the walk, it's "pay up or don't walk."

That may sound harsh, but the deferred self-donation program was developed years ago when a lot of donations were mailed in via snail mail and took weeks to process.   Nowadays, with the vast majority of donations coming in via online donations and posting immediately, there's no real reason to say "go ahead and walk, and we'll see what's still floating around in the pipeline, and if you're still short in a month, then we'll hit you for the difference."

So yeah, I can understand those tears from walkers who've done everything they can to raise funds and are still short.  I'd be sick -- absolutely sick -- if I'd spent all summer training and passing the hat and, well, begging -- and still came up short.

But there's a bright side -- most walkers who sign up do manage to make the $2,300 minimum.  In fact, many raise much more.   There are lots of fundraising ideas available on  the 3-Day website and they've been developed with care by experienced walkers who know what works and what doesn't.  But the simple fact remains -- that $2,300 doesn't come easy.  It comes in $5 and $10 donations.  Now and then you get $35.  Sometimes you get $50.  Sometimes you get $100 ... and sometimes you get a dollar because that's what the person who saw you standing out in the hot sun all day, dressed from head to toe in pink and shaking a can labeled "DONATIONS FOR BREAST CANCER" happened to have in their pocket.

There've been times in my five years walking 3-Day walks that I thought I'd written the greatest fundraising letter ever: poignant, funny, heart-warming, etcetera, etcetera.  And then:

...crickets

Day after day I'd check my email hoping to see some donations rolling in -- and found none.  I've had to ask my wife "Re-read the letter I sent out.  Did I absent-mindedly say something really awful in my letter?  Did I forget to actually ask for a donation or include my fundraising link?"  And she's looked it over and said "No, no, it was fine.  Are people not donating?"

But then, sometimes, out of the blue, lightning strikes.  I opened my email one day last summer to find that I'd gotten a donation -- a pretty darn big one -- from a former co-worker who just happened to have seen a short post I'd absent-mindedly posted on LinkedIn.  I hardly ever talk about the 3-Day on LinkedIn -- it seems to be a site where people post resumes, add their current and former co-workers as connections, and then forget all about.  But there it was, in my inbox --"A donation was made on your behalf".

And I'd been having a pretty rotten day at that point.  Suddenly, though, the clouds parted and angels sang hosannas.  I had to look twice at my email to prove I wasn't dreaming.  But there it was:  "A donation was made on your behalf".   I didn't know if it was going to be for $5 or for $125.   You've got to open the email to find out.  But that didn't matter -- it was a donation.   I was some unknown distance closer to making my fundraising minimum.   And then, when I opened the email, and saw the amount and who it was from, my perplexity at having gotten a donation from an unexpected source was definitely outweighed by my pleasure at the size of the donation.   Nothing could get me down the rest of that day, that's for sure.

(It's important to note that donations don't go into our pockets -- they go directly to Susan G. Komen For The Cure.  We walkers and crew have no direct monetary stake in the event at all -- except, of course, in the sense that we may  have to donate a big lump sum out of our own pockets if we come up short.)

People often ask "Why do you have to raise so much?  Why not lower the minimum?"

The 3-Day is a huge event in each city where it's held, 14 cities in all, involving anywhere from one thousand to over five thousand walkers and crew and volunteers and staff.   And that's with the minimum at $2,300.  If the minimum was $500, the event might draw 15,000 walkers and there's no way, logistically, that a 3-Day event of that size would be manageable.    And with that said, a much larger event with a much smaller minimum might raise less money than a smaller event with a larger minimum.

Participants who don't feel able to raise that much money can always take part in the Race for the Cure, which takes place in dozens of cities all across the USA and which has no fundraising minimum.  The 3-Day is for the real loonies -- the diehards who don't quail at the idea of walking sixty miles in 3 days OR the idea of raising $2,300.

Call me a loony.  Lots of people do.  But I maintain -- even though I know the task of raising all that money is hard -- it will come in time and I have faith in the goodness and generosity of my friends and co-workers and fellow church members.  After all, breast cancer affects one in every eight women, on average -- and I have a lot of friends and acquaintances.   Do the math.

But even with my faith, there's still no feeling quite as good as opening my email and seeing those magic words:

 "A donation was made on your behalf".

Because every time that happens, I know I'm one step closer to my fundraising minimum, and furthermore, we might -- we just might -- be one step closer to funding the clinical trial or discovering the drug that makes all this worthwhile.  And if we don't find a drug with the money I raise, well, helping fund mammograms is a pretty damn good thing too.

And another thing... no, never mind.  Let me cut to the chase:

Even though my graduate school alma mater, Virginia Tech, is currently doing its best to lose the Sugar Bowl right this second, I'm feeling pretty good about life.

Take a look:

Thanks, David, Ken, Joe, and Jill.   Thanks to you, today's been a good day.