Argh.

[rivka]

I just made my calls for the church survey and canvass. Three messages on answering machines and a very stressful conversation with an acquaintance of mine.

She's a new mother who just moved house and combined households with her partner and hasn't had the time to come to church for a couple months now. She didn't want to meet in person - not at her house, not in a public place. She didn't have time to talk on the phone now, and she didn't want to set up a time for me to call her back when she might have time to talk because she didn't know when that might be. She wanted to get me off the phone as soon as possible. She apologized for it, but didn't particularly try to hide it. Her bottom line: she loves the church, but she just can't do anything about it right now.

All of this was perfectly her right, of course, and very reasonable considering the state of her life right now. I don't blame her a bit. It is a horrible imposition to push into people's busy lives like this. And no matter what I say about wanting people's input about the future of the church, I can't fool them into thinking that it's not - at heart - about asking them for money.

I don't know how I'm going to do this with three more people.

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Ow. Ow. That's *really* hard... personally, I have trouble asking someone out to lunch, let alone asking for money.

Yeah, this is really a socially anxious person's nightmare. I'm not consistently socially anxious - some social interactions are easy for me, others are really hard - and this could've been one of the things that went either way. Now I'm feeling pretty desperate about my remaining calls - although it helps somewhat that curiousangel just made his and most people were perfectly willing to meet with him. So I figure that if people are generally nice to him, it's reasonable to anticipate that they'll be generally nice to me. Right?

All I can say is that in your situation, I'd skip the census and survey and go for the concrete "Our roof leaks, our building is falling apart, and we're going to have to let the part-time youth group leader go unless we can increase our total pledges for next year by X%. Can you help out?"

Because it would be easier to keep the interaction short and be very businesslike? I dunno. It does minimize the opportunity for rejection, but the parts about people's budget preferences and concerns are important. Argh.

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

FWIW, as a board member of the church, and someone working on streamlining the church's administrative functions, I'm equally concerned with all three legs of what we're asking people about. We've got to make some cuts and get more volunteers, so I want to know what they can pledge to help out, what they think is workable for cutting (how much and where), and how much time they can volunteer and what tasks they'd like to do.

I have great faith in our fellow churchmembers helping out as best they can, if they only know what is being asked of them. It's true that M. is not really in a great place to increase any commitments, and that's totally understandable; what I want to know is what she thinks we need to put our limited resources toward. Do we need to improve the Religious Education program, or should we work on better community outreach? Are our efforts to improve the facility appreciated? Do we need to back off any particular programs?

Yes, we're going to ask them for money. Yes, we're going to ask them for time. But... we'll take "I can't" for an answer, too.

I trust you above anyone else I know to talk to people and to find out what they think, and to communicate to them what the church is in need of. I know you're nervous about this, but you're going to do just fine.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I trust you above anyone else I know to talk to people and to find out what they think, and to communicate to them what the church is in need of. I know you're nervous about this, but you're going to do just fine.

Aww. Thank you, angel. I love you too.