Shabbat, latkes, fund-raising, Sunday dinner

[cellio]

This was a low-key Shabbat for me, because Dani went off to an SCA event on Saturday but I didn't. After the hustle and bustle of travelling last weekend, it was a pleasant change. Didn't get very far on the torah portion I'm learning, but that's ok as there's time yet. (I need to remember to check one bit of weird pronunciation with Dani. I've never seen a kametz on a nun sofit; I assume it behaves the same way as on a chaf or chet.)

The SCA event was originally advertised as an event about children, Christmas, and shopping. The first two I don't do and the last I don't do on Shabbat, so I started off inclined against. And, of course, the event charged the corporate tax, which is a point against. A very deserving friend was being elevated to the peerage, which I wanted to see, but ultimately I decided that the combination of event activities, high price ($15+), and Shabbat complications argued against. (I wasn't willing to miss Shabbat services for a third event this fall, and stuff was happening before we would have gotten there.) I regret missing the elevation but I don't regret missing the event.

This afternoon I helped cook latkes for my synagogue's ("first annual") latke sale. That was fun, though I wasn't paying enough attention to repetitive motion early enough so one wrist is a little sore. I noticed it early enough that things should be fine tomorrow, though. And I learned a useful technique: form the patties by taking a slotted spoon, scooping up potato mixture, and squeezing with your other hand to send the excess moisture out through the slots while forming a spoon-shaped patty. That's much easier than pressing 'em between your hands, which is what I've done in the past.

I asked the coordinator if this fund-raiser was effective, and she said she wasn't sure yet. It replaces, in part, the annual "Jewish Food Festival", which I feel was way too much effort for too little money. And some board members fixated on it too much, and hounded other board members for not volunteering tons of time and effort to make it work. I remember one board meeting where I almost said, "Look, you're planning on tons of work to bring in $X. We have Y members. Here's $10, more than my share. You can keep the change but you have to stop pestering me." But I didn't, and we were finally able to kill it.

So this year we're doing a latke sale that probably won't raise that much money, but it's also not as much work. And they were able to graft a raffle onto it for basically no cost, so that might end up making a difference. We'll see.

There seems to be this mentality that working on fund-raising events is inherently fun and good, so even if they don't produce a lot of money you should do it. I take a more businesslike approach: if you aren't going to make a reasonable amount of money from it, you shouldn't abuse your volunteers, whose time is valuable. I would have been happy to pay an extra $10 a year in dues to never hear from the food festival again. This year I was willing to spend a few hours making latkes, but if I learn that it was basically a wash, I might not be willing to do so next year.

No one explained this aspect of the Jewish community to me, and I find it a little peculiar. When I was a kid involved in various organizations that needed to raise money, we did our best to optimize the payoff:effort ratio. I don't see that happening in my synagogue, and I get the impression it doesn't happen in others either.

Sunday dinner was fun. ralphmelton passed around a new game he picked up, My Life With Master, which looks like it could be neat. It's not a genre I'm generally fond of -- Victorian horror -- but it's almost pure role-playing, which has a lot of appeal. I'm looking forward to reading the rules. (He's written about it in his journal.)

Dessert tonight was a yummy concoction involving gingerbread cake, peaches, cranberries, whipped cream, and probably other stuff. Very pretty to look at (it was in layers in a colorless glass dish) and quite tasty.

Comments

[cellio]

Hmm. Interesting possibility. No, I haven't heard your "four modalities" paradigm yet. Please elaborate?

It's true that a lot of this does seem to be food-oriented -- the food festival, the latke sale, some fancy dinners, etc. There are definitely non-food activities with a pretext to fundraising (and with strong pressure to participate), though -- the Purimspiel (congregation-produced play to which they sell tickets), theatre and sports outings (where the idea is to pay an inflated ticket price to go with the group), and a couple others. Mostly it's food, though, and I hadn't considered the idea that while the nominal and vocal emphasis is on fundraising, that might not really be what's going on.

I see a difference between this sort of thing and SCA events. Events are things we do for ourselves, and most people pitch in (globally; not necessarily at any given event). The money really is just to cover costs, most of the time, and if someone could magically wave a wand and make there be no costs, most groups wouldn't collect any money -- because it's all "us", not "the public". If an SCA group were to, say, organize a renn fest for the public, that'd be different -- that might be an explicit fundraiser for the group, because it's ok to collect money above costs from the public. (The food festival was like that -- advertised heavily throughout the city, not just for the congregation. It was supposed to be the big annual fundraiser for the congregation, except it wasn't very good at that job.) Few SCA groups do that kind of fundraiser, though, because it's a heck of a lot of work for a non-central purpose.

For what it's worth, I don't remember a major emphasis on fundraising in general or food-oriented fundraising in particular from my childhood congregation, though that could just be because they didn't rope kids into such things and for all I know my parents got pressured and said no.

You're thinking like a Pelican contemplating a fundraiser. Instead, use Laurel-brain, and contemplate it as an A&S project, and it makes more sense. It may have merit, but raising money just isn't one of them.

Maybe it's more like a Laurel contemplating a role as a merchant. It's hard to remain art-focused when doing mass production, even if you started out for artistic reasons. :-) (I personally turned 15+ gallons of batter into latke patties yesterday; there was no art involved... If I were doing a feast, on the other hand, I'd also be doing some amount of mass production, but it would be varied and I would have also planned and researched the menu, which scores A&S points.)