The Little Words Mean the Most

What charities CAN sell is meaning; that's worth more than a package of gum

         Purpose.

         Emotional gratification.

         Reassurance and relief. ("I AM a good person!")

         To your best customers (donors), those things will be worth a lot more than wowie-zowie shoes or a comfortable night's sleep or a branded tote bag or a cup made overseas which has to elbow space from all those other charity cups made overseas. Although an easily repositionable sticker would be nice {~?~} I'd probably mount that

YES! That's RIGHT!SEE what I'm driving.... on my acceptably ") car's rear window, even if just to make others jealous.¶You're in the "pleasing me" business. You're in the "empowerment" business. You're in the "we're going to change this world for the better and it will take all kinds" business. You're not a slave, though, to weak-ass, 3rd-grade bullies

Simone gets a rare award

 

There are what? 20 on the planet? Now Simone's one! That bouquet was hand-delivered by Carol Golden, one of our longest-running friends in the fundraising biz, to celebrate Simone's Nov. 16, 2018 receipt of the AFP (international) 2019 Distinguished Fellow Award. Later, two unicorns dab horns, in tribute. That's Ashley Belanger, the planet's newest nonprofit consultant. She was president of her high school. She's a kick-boxer.

 

With Fab & Jean-Claude hiking the pretties around Albi

 

 

Fab et Simone peruse the drinks menu at an Albi café

A bench with a Paul Eluard poem written on it

En visitez to 3-star Grotte de Clamouse aprés deluge

 

In the Herault river canyon, under these hills, 25 minutes from the house, stretch miles of caverns. It had poured the day before. When it rains, something like 30 square miles of leaking terrain spill into the caverns. But of course, as the guide emphasized, without rain, there are no caverns. And these are spectacular. And built oh so slowly in human time: a single drop can take two years to fall off the tip of a stalactite. Good bathrooms, too: always important for visitors.