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Listen, NASA, About the Popcorn ...

Hot_buttered_popcorn If you've been reading along, you know I'm a big flag carrier for Uncle Charlie's research and faculty and the saving of the planet we do on a pretty much daily basis. (Go Slugs!)

We work with NASA on issues like Adaptive Optics (adjusting images from space through supah smaht lens manipulation); we mapped the human genome for the first time (making history, you're welcome); and we partner with all manner of federal, state, and private big shots on saving the environment. Again, your very survival is our pleasure.

We even work with Stanford. Yes. The BIG Stanford right over the hill, with its fat funding from fatter moguls. At Stanford, there's a big banner on new student move-in day that says, "Welcome babies, we are the machine." (No. There isn't, really.)

I love Stanford. Private funding offers a brave world of opportunity, and big Stanford brains can only add depth to the humanity-focused work, we, at Uncle Charlie's place are famous for.

According to Stanford, their economists worked with ours and discovered that popcorn is just the right price at theaters: "The findings empirically answer the age-old question of whether it’s better to charge more for a primary product or a secondary product. Putting the premium on the "frill" items, it turns out, indeed opens up the possibility for price-sensitive people to see films. That means more customers coming to theaters in general, and a nice profit from those who are willing to fork it over for the Gummy Bears."

Thank you, privately funded research.

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Slug Song Blue

Resonating brands and effective product placement ... what more could a marketing gal ask for?  Let me sing you my sad, slug song, and you'll know.

First, a product placement primer:

When Steven Colbert started eating Doritos on the Colbert Report, I couldn't help but think there were leagues of 20-something stoners out there, with sudden longings for cheesy, crunchy goodness.

Doritos, I marvelled, is supah smaht. (the company, not the food) That's some fine product placement.

I work for a school with a mascot who was honored by People magazine (1986) and Sports Illustrated (1992) as the most memorable character in the history of mascots. How cool is that? Slap that slug on Steven Colbert, and we'd have us a Doritos-munching admissions glut.

Uncle Charlie's students l-u-v their slug. In 1986, students protested Berkeley-style, and overturned the Chancellor's insistence that Sea Lions would be a more dignified representative for a research university in the prestigious UC system. Protesting students even got David Letterman to plead their case. Wow! Groundswell-grown branding that culminates with late night airtime? I have died and gone to marketer heaven. Welcome devoted alumni population!

In 1994, Sammy (our banana slug's first name) got a starring role on a shirt on one John Travolta  in the movie Pulp Fiction. Okay, Travolta is hardly what we're looking for in a student, what with his character's mob hit man career, heroin habit, and again, the crazy Scientologist thing, but, if you've seen the movie, you know it's not his shirt. He borrows it from Tarantino's character (reputable, by the movie's standards), and, in fact, it's truly Tarantino's shirt. He's an artsy filmmaker. Those students, we like.

Oh, and when our NCAA Division III tennis team won it all a few years ago (we won again last year, thank you), our Chancellor at the time coined a fitting and stirring banana slug motto: "Banana Slugs: No known predators!" You couldn't pay an ad agency enough to come up with such quirky genius.

So. Why don't you see Sammy on everything that comes out of our office?


See. We're the folks who are working with NIH and NASA and other big-initial agencies to solve global warming and other planetary uglies. Our PhD program in History of Consciousness produces the faculty who teach that stuff at the Ivy League Schools. We mapped the human genome for the first time ever, for heaven's sake. Banana Slugs don't speak to that, do they? Sammy is enigmatic, but he's clearly not academic ... even though he's wearing glasses and (if you haven't seen the Fiat Slug seal up close) reading Plato. Sammy, NASA isn't buying it.

Maybe that's why Stanford has a tree (yes it does, look it up) as their mascot. There is no mascot-esque animal that says, "Producing genius MBAs and Robber Barons since 1891." For that, you need a big tree.

Nonetheless. I do love my slug. I am forever looking to elevate his status. This is Sammy's song.

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Meet Robert: Saving the Gay, Black Whales for Jesus

I've spent my entire 16-year career writing marketing copy for nonprofits. Until I moved to Portland in August, I'd never published anything that wasn't about homeless animals,  abused women, environmental ruin, Catholic hospitals, higher education, museum school tours ... Basically, any prose that  helped to save the amalgamated "gay, black whales for Jesus"--that was my job. Of course, I've also written volumes about tax advantageous philanthropy, but it's always been in support of "a cause."

Charitable Remainder Unitrusts, anyone? Riveting stuff.

I'd been a dog groomer after college (rendering the parents endlessly proud). A girlfriend got me a job in an animal shelter. Working for Peninsula Humane Society, I managed the front office, approving adoptions, processing and consoling owner-requested euthanasia clients, worked with families who were giving up their animals for ridiculous or heart-breaking reasons, or coming to claim stray animals that our animal control officers found wandering the streets. It wasn't an easy job, but it t'weren't nothin' compared to the folks who worked in the field.

When dog owners came to my desk and demanded their pet who had been running on the freeway, and claimed the county shelter "had no right" to take their animal out of harm's way, the big threat was: "I pay your paycheck!" I loved pointing at the animal control officer in the next office and saying, "No you don't. Donors do. You pay his paycheck." When the vet tech who had examined and fed their pet walked through the front office, I could add, "You pay a portion of her paycheck."

I chatted with Mr. pays-my-paycheck with polite, but evangelical froth: "If it weren't for the donors who pay the rest of the tech's paycheck, and all of mine, there wouldn't be enough people to care for your pet or the other 20,000 homeless animals we care for every year. You'd be here at this front desk, talking to yourself. Would you like your well cared for, vaccinated pet, now?"

It was exhausting. I'm a fundraiser because it's much easier to tell that story than it was to live it. But, there were also amazing experiences that led me to this work.

Like Robert.

In the late '90s, Robert was dying of cancer. By the time I met him, he was in a wheelchair and had a full time caregiver. Other than his medical support team, he had no family. I was working in adoptions when he came in to adopt a pet.

He started the conversation saying that he was dying. "How long do you have?" I asked. 

"A few months," he told me, making me want to cry right there with how immediate and no-way-around-it he was. "I want a pet to be my family." Of course.

Who wouldn't give that man a dog?  Me. I'm a jerk. It was awful to tell him, but my job was to find homes where animals could be cared for, long term. That was our deal, even if it meant some animals didn't ever make it out of the shelter. We can argue that philosophy another time. As you might imagine, I have opinions. Robert was in and out of hospitals, rarely strong enough for the kind of big, uncontrolled, goofball dog he was partial to. I offered a compromise.

"You can come here any time you want. Whether the shelter is open or not, we'll give you a visitation room and fill the room with dogs, cats, bunnies, whatever you want to visit. Stay as long as you want."

We became friends. He had my direct phone number, though he never asked for anything that tested his special status with us. He came in a few days a week at first, and later, came only when he was strong enough or not in the hospital, which was sometimes only once a week. Sometimes less. When he visited, we had kitties climbing on him like he was a carpeted cat tree. He played with great dogs and dogs that drove everyone else nuts. He was St. Francis in a wheelchair. So many animals benefited from his huge heart.

In fact, Robert adopted himself an entire front office staff/family that looked forward to his visits as much as the animals did. An animal shelter's front office staff faces enough I-pay-your-paycheck dorks; they bask in a guy that appreciates the animals. Robert understood that we, too, cared deeply for our animals. And, we certainly appreciated him.

One week, his caretaker didn't wheel him directly to the visitation room. They came to my office with a gift. "Here. You need this." It was a check for $60,000. I'd never seen that many zeros on non-Monopoly money before. What a guy. The shelter sent a formal thank you note, as every charity should. I handwrote him a note from the front office, and everyone signed it. Some included their own, personal sentiments.

That was the last time I saw him. Shortly after that, our ED promoted me to the fundraising office on the other side of the building--where my evangelical froth could be "more productively directed."

Within a few weeks of starting my new job, I was at my desk when a call came from the front office. It was an attorney. Apparently Robert had at least one friend besides us. He was Robert's executor and wanted to visit us in person. With a smile, he handed me $250,000. "This place meant so much to him," he said. I was too choked up to ask when he'd died, but told Robert's attorney/friend how much Robert's visits had meant to our staff and the animals.

Robert is my touchstone to what's great about raising money for a living. Nonprofit marketing is about real people, real relationships, and making great things happen for the causes my donors and I believe in.

Today, I still want to write about people like Robert and their charities. But, it's been an emotional ride. Sometimes, I just want to write about my dog and how much he cracks me up. It's light and fun, and something I can do without worrying that my words aren't enough to save all of the gay, black whales for Jesus.

Because, really, they never are.

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Worst School in America

If we are to be judged by our enemies as well as our friends, then I guess not having Sean Hannity on our side at UCSC is good news. Right?

Recently, David Horowitz was on Hannity's show and he ha-a-ated UCSC, calling us the "worst school in America." Oh my. My university colleague summed up the Hannity/Horowitz experience for fellow staffers:

We work for "The Worst School in America". At least according to Fox News and some dude named David Horowitz. Evidently this guy has a book out rating schools based on (liberal) "brainwashing of students?"

No idea how he measured that, I would guess he's not a scientist.

He did acknowledge that Astronomy is "number one", Physics is "first rate" and that our various professional schools are quite good.

Evidently, all it takes to be named the worst school is to call a department "feminist studies" (instead of women's studies) and have an admitted communist on faculty.

Horrors. Like Harvard? Ew. Unseemly.

This is akin to this year's Princeton Review top schools ratings, who (also questionably) found Uncle Charlie* to be a little crunchy and unshaved. We're number 3 in the category, "Birkenstock wearers." This year, we've slipped a tad in our "Reefer Madness" ratings when compared to past years, but Princeton still deemed us a national "Best Value" university because of our superior education for the money.

Hello? Solving global warming over here, folks. Who has time to shave? Or put on shoes with laces.

As one of our students that Princeton Review interviewed pointed out (quite rightly), we're many "different kinds of people, united in our desire to chill out."

That's a great brand in my book. Especially because we  are top astronomers and physics geniuses and poets united in pursuit of chilling.

Still, it's probably bad news for Uncle Charlie. In the end, embracing the "smart counter/future-culture enviro-geek" message isn't easy. Having America watch five ... straight ... minutes of "these guys suck" on Fox News is a bummer, from a marketing perspective, no matter who you are. It's no wonder our university relations team is struggling with the story.

That said, we can embrace our hippiegeeks here. Hug a slug today. Together, we're changing the world.

*Uncle Charlie's Summer Camp is our alumni-embraced acronym-re-named.

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