Calling SBCC donors to say thanks with PTK.

Wednesday afternoon was a special Wednesday. I went for the first time to a meeting of the Entrepreneur Club of SBCC (as you can read in my last post), and I took for the first time an online midterm, in the subject of Art History (as you can read in the same post). 

After the exam it was about 5 pm, time to tuck in my shirt, pull out my blazer, and get ready for my weekly PTK Leadership meeting. Oh! Wait a minute; we did not have a regular meeting this week. 

In fact, instead of holding our general weekly meeting, this week the PTK Leadership has agreed to take on the job of calling and thanking the supporters of the SBCC Foundation, who have donated over 4 million dollars to the various programs of the school. 

So this Wednesday afternoon was also the first time I picked up a telephone and called strangers to thank them.

Pizza and a view. That's my friend Adam at work.

This was a new experience for all of us, and as always it was fun and entertaining just because we were doing it together. It started out very awkward. We were handed a list of names and phone numbers and a script. We were supposed to call the phone numbers and thank the donors by reading off the script, which read something like: “Hello, am I speaking to ______? Hi _______, my name is Federico. I am a student at Santa Barbara City College and I am just calling to thank you for your support of the SBCC Foundation. It really means a lot, and I wanted to personally tell you how much SBCC students appreciate your contributions.” After that, we were instructed to stop and give them time to reply, and let them say anything they wanted; if they wanted to carry on a conversation, we would give them the opportunity, and once they were done, we would greet them and wish them a wonderful day. 

While it definitely felt kind of weird at the beginning (especially when I was saying “I wanted to personally tell you how much we appreciate…”), all of us soon began to have fun with it. It was funny to hear each others trying to be professional while reading the script, but although we were having fun we also managed to call and thank almost 500 people! 

Some of the donors would literally just answer “ok” to our message, and some were even slightly rude; but many others were very glad we did take the time to call them and they thanked us back and wished us a great day.

The experience was made even better by the fact that there was free food… Rusty’s pizza, and I LOVE PIZZA so that made me happy. Finally, this took place in one of the press box rooms at the top of La Playa Stadium, and the view from there is breathtaking. 

It was another great experience, thanks to my fam in PTK. :)  

A presto,

- Fede