As I mentioned, I was my company’s coordinator for the Angel Tree program this year - a job I cheerfully took when it was offered to me after the 2010 holiday season was over. Last year’s coordinator has a nearly superhuman number of irons in the fire at all times, see, so when she asked if I would take over obtaining the Angel Tree tags and returning the gifts to the Salvation Army for the 2011 season I gladly said “yes”.
At first blush it sounds easy, and, for the most part it is. A number of tags (usually 15) is reserved under the company’s name. The tags are then picked up and passed to sub-coordinators in different departments who then distribute them to people who are interested in buying gifts for the needy recipients. Later, the donors come back with the gifts and the coordinator (me) takes the stuff the the SA when the time comes.
It is at this time I really need to say that the sub-coordinators for this year’s effort were the most motivated, helpful, and organized team I have ever had the pleasure to be a part of. My part in this phase was basically limited to doing administrative stuff on the periphery. Any successes our involvement in the program had this year was due solely to their hustle and hard work, and not by me making photocopies and maintaining an Excel spreadsheet or some other nonsense. I cannot overstate this and I have no illusions to the contrary.
You may recall from Part III that I was shocked to discover that no computers were being used to track the applicant’s paperwork as the interviews were being done, and that I thought that this opened the door to a slew of potential problems. I had no idea how right that guess would be.
As the day the tags were to be ready for pickup approached without notification, I became concerned - the window between interviewing the applicants and the final delivery of the gifts to the SA was narrow enough as it was, after all.
Repeated calls and emails to the SA to find out what was going on were not returned. On the phone I would usually only get a “I don’t know anything about the Angel Tree program, and [name withheld] isn’t here right now”. True enough. But to imply there is only one person around who can clear up any sort of issue or answer any question is insulting and borderline lying by omission. There are, in fact, many other people around that could answer questions - it is literally impossible that a single person could run every aspect of this huge, widespread, and multifaceted program.
Only by showing up in person was I able to eventually get answers to questions that needed answering (this would later show itself to be a rule rather than an exception). I was told that when the tags were sent out to be printed with the children’s data (first name, shirt size, etc.) the first batch came back blank. Once that issue was identified a second group was printed up. Every card in the second batch came back all with the same child’s name and information - that is, all the cards were identical. Apparently, it took a week to get these problems “corrected” and have new cards re-issued with a whole new suite of problems (more on that in Part V of this post).
I picked up the first set of 15 cards and, without really looking them over, handed photocopies of them out to the subs and asked them to tell people that the due date was one day earlier than it really was.
My thinking was that this one-day buffer would be useful in the event that someone picked up a card, waited until the last minute to do shopping, and then got sick or had car trouble and couldn’t make it in that day or whatever. The photocopies were used instead of the real thing in case someone lost their tag - I locked the originals away after transcribing the info on them into a spreadsheet.
The one-day buffer ended up being useful in two instances and one person managed to lose their tag the sub gave them and needed another copy.
A quick rant on this sub-topic.
There is no functional difference between forgetting to buy gifts for the recipients or losing their tag or something and simply taking their tag and throwing it straight into the nearest trash can. It is not the same as never taking a tag in the first place. Even though the odds that any one person will be helped are long to begin with, you make the decision to penalize them by taking their card out of this “lottery” entirely through abject negligence.
It is not “the thought that counts”, here. Only results.
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