CRUNCH TIME!

Hello everybody,

Well, y'all, here we are four weeks away from the end of this campaign, and it's crunch time. Right now we're sittin' at 61.1% with $1,314,955 of a $2,150,000 goal. Not too bad. We're gettin' there. These last four weeks are when a lot of magic happens, and we just got to stay focused.

We had our mid-campaign report meeting a few days back, and we had all of the reporting chairs with the exception of Bryan Daniels, who was away on business – so he says. I think he was still embarrassed by the funny video.

Just so everybody knows, Andy White's General Business Division came in first place, raising almost 75% of their goal. (General Business is up to 82.8% of their goal to date.)

Here's a picture of him accepting his blue ribbon.

I'm proud of Andy. He's become a true politician.

(Now don't tell him I said that.)

But it was a great report meeting, and each of our campaign chairs reported being on target to meeting our goal, which is wonderful.

Anyway, here we are with a little less than a month to go in the campaign. The hard work starts now. We've got a little more than $827,000 left to raise, and we're down to weeks left. And we've got a long way to go and a short time to get there.

It's time to get energized and refocused. That last lap is the hardest one to run, and it's time to run.

Blog ya' later,
Dave Bennett

Got Gas? I Did!

Hey everybody,

Gas Day was Friday. That was good to get out there and get gas. Aw, you know what I mean.


First of all, I want to thank the hundreds of volunteers we had at E-Z Stops, KenJo Markets, and Mr. Gas locations. And we couldn't have even done Gas Day without the gas companies, like Calloway Oil, Downey Oil, and McNutt Oil. They allowed us to pump gas, wash windshields, and accept tips, and I want to thank them for their community spirit for giving United Way some of the money they make off of the gas from the sales that day. Plus, Coke and Pepsi helped out, too.

We got a total on the tips. We raised $6,197.19 in TIPS alone on Gas Day. That doesn't include the money from the gas sales or the soda sales. That's strictly tips, and it's over $2,500 more than what was made in tips last year.

It was a great opportunity for those of us who volunteer with United Way to get the word out about what we do. I saw several people who did not know about United Way, and it gave me the opportunity to tell them about what we did.

At our station we even had a guy from New Orleans who had never heard of United Way, and he was so moved by our United Way and what we do, he said he was going to go back to New Orleans and make a contribution.

And we touched a lot of people who don't get to hear about United Way, and hopefully, they'll go home and check us out on the internet. And of course, you know me, I didn't talk up my blog at all.

Our station did $561.86 in tips. We had about fifteen volunteers from our office for the station, and I thank them for taking the time to do that. And I appreciate the mayor coming out and spending some time with folks. I didn't strong-arm the staff too much, I hope.

WATE came out and did a news story about us for their 10 o'clock news, and the mayor was out there pumping gas and washing windows, being the good public servant that he is.

And the beauty of this is we're out there doing this for United Way. I think we're going to surpass our estimates for the day, and what that means is we'll be able to make goal, beat goal, and when allocations rolls around, we'll be able to make that much more of a difference in Blount County, and that's where it really matters.

Well, thank y'all for comin' out to Gas Day. I'll blog again soon about our mid-campaign report meeting we had, too. So stay tuned for that!

Blog ya' later,
Dave Bennett