All Faiths feedback … finally!

WOW! WOW! WOW!

Um, that’s kind of — almost — all I can say.

MC Reality Online readers dug deep, counted coin, wrote checks, and typed in credit card numbers to the tune of … $1,943 in collective donations to All Faiths Food Bank to help feed the hungry in our community. (more…)

An All Faiths update

All Faiths let me know that they won’t have the final tallies on donations until possibly just before New Year’s. Sorry! I’m going to wait until then to do the drawing and finalize that column. It’s a good thing, though, because they said they’re so busy, they just haven’t caught up with all the donations in general. That’s a great problem to have! So, stay tuned and I’ll update the Reality Reader drive next week.

All Faiths update

Hey, anyone who might be looking for news about the results of the MC Reality Reader/All Faiths Food Bank fundraising drive — sorry!

All Faiths didn’t have a chance to get the numbers to me yesterday, so unfortunately, I can’t give you an update. I’m going to hold off on the drawing until I get the numbers in and then do a wrap-up column/posting.

Whatever amount we raised — doesn’t really matter, but I did want to include that in the final column about the drive.

So, I’ll report more about that on Monday hopefully!

All Faiths drive ends tomorrow! Still time to donate …

Hey, just a reminder that the MC Reality Reader/All Faiths Food Bank fundraising drive ends tomorrow — Thursday, December 18th at 5 p.m.!

If you’d like to donate, there’s still time — just go to the All Faiths website and make a donation online (and be sure to enter “MC Reality Drive” in the special instructions section). Also, if you do make a donation and want to take part in the random drawing — just post a blog comment to let me know or send me an email to mcrealityonline@yahoo.com.

MC on the radio tomorrow chatting up the All Faiths/Reality Reader fundraising drive

Emily Berno, one of the hosts of the popular local radio program — Truly Sustainable Sarasota — which airs Thursday mornings from 9 to 10 am, heard about the All Faiths/Reality Readers fundraising drive and has invited me on air tomorrow to chat the drive up and hopefully encourage listeners to chip in with their own donations.

It will be a quick piece — 5 or 10 minutes or so. 9:45 a.m., Thursday, December 11 and, if you feel like listening in, you can listen from your computer.

I’ll be posting an update on this blog sometime by Friday about how the drive is going and I sure do appreciate all the emails of support and the interest in the drive!

Wake up, MC, there really is a Santa Claus!

After yesterday’s blog posting, It’s About Love, a reader wrote to me and encouraged me to find some way to do my annual fundraising drive for All Faiths Food Bank despite the fact that I don’t have an in-print column.

The thought hadn’t occurred to me, really, and I’m really thankful (in the spirit of the season!) that this reader took the time to read my blog and then encourage me to look for an alternative way to do good for others. I think I thought I couldn’t help All Faiths this year — because I don’t have a print column and perhaps because I’ve got so many struggles of my own right now, that I truly thought I didn’t have the resources to help others.

Luckily, this reader woke me up! He encouraged me to not give up quite so easily as I had. And … he was willing to put his money where his mouth was – by offering up a sizeable donation to get things rolling. Beyond his generosity in offering to make a donation, his gentle kick in the butt is even more important to me — and it proves something I’ve been thinking about ever since Obama was elected. (more…)

Sarasota’s All-America City Quest

This column appeared in the Pelican Press newspaper, June 29, 2006.

Sarasota County was recently designated an “All-America County.”

County Commission Chairman David Mills, quoted on the County’s website, predicted this recognition would have “long-lasting effect on the Sarasota community.”

And County Administrator Jim Ley, quoted in a June 8 Sarasota Herald-Tribune article by Doug Sword, described the community pride that would result from this award as a “priceless commodity.”

But there is a price tag – estimated at about $27,000 in public funds according to Sword’s reporting.

For that $27k we get to put signage and decals around public buildings and businesses and proclaim ourselves as “All-America” for years to come. That is pretty long-lasting, I’ll admit, though I’m not sure its “effect” is all that profound.

Many would argue that $27,000 was PR-money well spent if it fosters civic pride, or that 27 grand is chump change in the overall county budget, so where’s the harm?

It is certainly a well-deserved accolade for the county employees and volunteers who bust their butts every day trying to make Sarasota a better place for all.

But priceless? Let’s take a look.

There are county residents – men, women, and children — who are drowning in poverty, illiteracy, and hunger. What could $27,000 in tax dollars have bought for them?

According to the All Faiths Food Bank website, a $5,000 donation results in 25,000 meals. I can do a little math; that translates to 135,000 all-American meals. A hot meal must seem pretty priceless when you’re hungry, even if its effects are short-term.

Want something a little longer lasting?

The Literacy Council of Sarasota estimates that 20 percent of area adults are “functionally illiterate.” That means one out of every five adults can’t fill out a job application or read a newspaper. Even if they wanted to feel that priceless civic pride Jim Ley spoke of, how are they going to find out about it if they can’t read?

A phone call to the Literacy Council yielded the following insight: It would cost them about $1,000 (excluding volunteer time) to take an adult from functional illiteracy to functional literacy.

The staffer I spoke with ball-parked this figure based on the Council’s annual operating budget, the cost of books for literacy students, and the number of people they serve. She also told me that children of illiterate adults are twice as likely to be illiterate once they reach adulthood themselves.

So, in exchange for the A-A status, we could have raised 27 county adults out of their illiteracy and given them and their children a fighting chance at literacy and all the benefits that go along with that.
By educating 27 adults you would be stopping the dysfunction, isolation and desolation of family illiteracy for generations to come.
You would be giving people the means to find jobs, lift themselves from poverty, empower them to vote, and ultimately lessen their burden on County services over not just one year, but over decades.

That sounds pretty priceless and long-lasting to me.

I have friends and colleagues in the County. I know they and the many volunteers they work with are hardworking folks who do a lot of good for a lot of people. And I understand the value of promoting that.

But spending taxpayers’ dollars to do it? It just doesn’t sit right.

I don’t believe real pride – the kind that fosters a community and effects change, true change, for all — is achieved by some ephemeral designation, no matter how laudatory.

I think real pride in a community is cultivated by knowing that someone’s got your back. Loyalty is a powerful motivator and it isn’t cultivated by vanity awards. It’s cultivated by making hard decision on where dollars go, and by standing up and by and for the ones you call neighbors.

What if the County had issued a statement saying, “Yeah, we came this close to spending $27,000 on an All-America designation, but instead we decided to put your money where our mouth is”?

I know it’s not as glamorous as the fancy, red, white and blue designation, but I’ve got to believe it would have inspired just as much, if not more, good publicity, lasting, measurable results, and sincere, all-American pride among county taxpayers. And that sounds pretty priceless to me.

Regifting good

Kindness is the one gift that should always be regifted. It’s a gift no one would ever be offended to receive knowing it had first belonged to someone else. And it’s a gift that once made, the giver would undoubtedly only be pleased if you passed it along to someone else.

I gave a talk on Friday — 90 or so people in the audience — and spoke at one point about the extraordinary generosity of my Reality Chick, Reality Online, and Sense and the City readers who, over the years, have contributed thousands and thousands of dollars during my annual fundraising drives for All Faiths Food Bank. I told the audience that my fee for the day’s talk was going straight to All Faiths, since every year I donate whatever I earn during the month of November from speaking and newspaper writing fees to All Faiths. (If you’d like to participate in this year’s drive or just learn more, click here.) I spoke about kindness and caring for everyone in our community — about the incredible need many are facing and I related times in my life, too, when I’d been in need and strangers had stepped up to help me.

After my talk, as I was preparing to leave, a woman approached me and pressed a check into my hands. “Your talk today moved me,” she said; and she asked me to make sure to send along her check, which she had just written, with mine when I send it in to All Faiths.

Such an unexpected kindness. Such an appreciated gesture. And her contribution will make a tangible difference to several someones in the upcoming weeks in our community. That’s the perfect regifting scenario: the group was kind enough to hire and pay me to speak; I was kind enough to earmark the fee for All Faiths; a stranger in the audience was kind enough to amplify those kindnesses with her own donation. Who know where this one small strand of kindness — begun when this group was kind enough to invite a column-less columnist to speak — will end?

Writer

M.C. Coolidge is an award-winning freelance writer, newspaper columnist/opinion journalist, and blogger, living in Sarasota, Florida.

Her weekly newspaper column, Sense and the City, appeared each Thursday in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune from 2010 to 2012, and her opinion essays have appeared in the Op/Ed pages of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, St. Petersburg Times, Tampa Tribune, and Bradenton Herald, among others. She was the recipient of a 2008 Florida Press Award for humor column-writing and has won numerous “best of” awards from local magazines and newspapers. As an opinion columnist, Coolidge has appeared several times as a guest panelist on the WEDU/PBS political television program, Florida This Week, moderated by Rob Lorei.

Through her newspaper columns, Coolidge has encouraged annual fundraising efforts to benefit the All Faiths Food Bank in Sarasota, helping collect nearly $14,000 to date from readers both print and online.

From 2006 to 2008, Coolidge penned a weekly newspaper column titled “Reality Chick” for the Pelican Press newspaper. Select columns from that period were published in her 2008 book, Sideways in Sarasota.

Coolidge is a native Floridian, was a Stadler Poet at Bucknell University (Spring ’92) at and completed her B.A. (English Writing/French Minor) at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, summa cum laude.

She is a native Floridian and currently resides in Sarasota.

About

M.C. Coolidge is a freelance writer, editor, and public relations consultant based in Sarasota, Florida, with clients in her hometown and beyond — including New York, Phoenix, Boston, Washington, D.C., and Palm Beach.

Her weekly newspaper column, Sense and the City, appeared each Thursday in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune from 2011 to mid-2012, and her opinion essays have appeared in the Op/Ed pages of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the St. Petersburg Times, Tampa Tribune, and Bradenton Herald, among others.

As an opinion columnist, Coolidge has appeared several times as a guest panelist on the WEDU/PBS political television program, Florida This Week, moderated by Rob Lorei. She was the recipient of a 2008 Florida Press Award for humor column-writing and has won numerous “best of” awards from local magazines and newspapers.

Since 2006, Coolidge has conducted annual fundraising through her print columns and online readership to benefit the All Faiths Food Bank in Sarasota, helping collect nearly $14,000 to date.

From 2006 to 2008, Coolidge penned a weekly newspaper column titled “Reality Chick” for the Pelican Press newspaper. Select columns from that period were published in her 2008 book, Sideways in Sarasota.

Coolidge was a Stadler Poet at Bucknell University (Spring ’92) at and completed her B.A. (English Writing/French Minor) at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire, summa cum laude.

She is a native Floridian and currently resides in Sarasota.

Click her to read M.C.’s Guest Column in the St. Petersburg Times.
Click here to read M.C.’s Op/Ed contributions to the Tampa Tribune.