Vashon Island Strawberry Festival Bernie Booth!
Email from a friend--
(1) Our booth was literally a parade stopper! Not only did people IN the parade see us and call out "Go Bernie!" as they passed, but at one point a group came to a full stop and they and the audience all started chanting, "Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!" Then, the parade started moving again...
(2) Our volunteers said the energy was amazing. People from all walks of life stopped, donated, asked questions, took home Chad Lupkes' bumper stickers, and signed the petition for Initiative 735...very positive feel!
(3) When signing up for the National Campaign, we created a spot to sign up locally and most/many did this...AND on our raffle tickets, people could mark if they wanted their information to be shared with the National or Local groups...most said yes. They basically WANT to get involved!
(4) We decided that the event had to pay for itself - in order to manifest repeat events, we can drain people financially. So, aside from one person who was willing to cover 1/2 the cost of the booth as a personal donation...we covered printing, T-shirts, bumper stickers, a huge banner...AND we still had $1,000 in donations to send to the campaign!
(5) Our focus is on "rolling events" with new coordinators every time - this trains up a lot of folks in what it takes to be an event coordinator while also spreading the burden around so people avoid burn-out.
(6) It did take time to do the post-festival accounting, I'm having to process the data into a list of interested folks, and we're trying to get the T-shirts to the raffle winners. So, all in all...my advice is to arrange for a post-event volunteer to help with these details. Otherwise it falls to the event organizer.
Next event is July 29th and, frankly, it looks like we'll have more interest than we have room. We're also discussing whether or not to accept donations. The venue requires that IF you fundraise, 10% of what you raise must be paid to the venue. Otherwise, it's $10 an hour. So, for a 3 hour event with potentially 100 people, I've argued that we're better off paying $30 than giving 10% of monies people intended for Bernie to a local venue. ALSO, it seems that the BEST way to create a long-lasting campaign is for members of the 99% to sign up for auto-donations on a monthly basis...$10 a month, $25 a month...consistently is better than a one time donation.
SO, hopefully we'll send a lot of people home with the information for how to do this and they'll become "regular supporters" of Bernie's Campaign!
= new reply since forum marked as read
And point 5...super thinking ahead, to rotate people to avoid burnout.
Go Bernie!
Though I don't regret spending the day grilling with my folks 
Any word where things will be happening on the 29th?
Feeling the "Bern" in Vashon, WA!
