Yesterday was the birthday of HAL 9000, one of the creepiest film villains ever in the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” HAL’s silky tenor voice coddles,and then terrorizes the hero Dave, until Dave defeats the computer with a simple screwdriver, a classic example of High Touch triumphing over High Tech. In the book, HAL became operational on January 12, 1997 in Urbana, Illinois. Let’s finish off the birthday cake with a look at effective High Tech and Touch, and how they each shaped 2008.
High Tech: The world was dazzled by the Obama campaign’s use of high tech to build a fundraising juggernaut and an organizing marvel in 2007 and 2008. Candidate Barak Obama raised a record $605 million, mostly from small $10 and $25 donors, which truly broadened the base for democracy and liberated the campaign from relying on the same old clique of major donors.
One innovation was trusting their constituent groups to operate their own sites under the My.BarakObama.com umbrella site. For example, Navy veteran and professional airline pilot Jan Donatelli wanted to bring more pilots into the Obama campaign. In the Bush years, many pilots saw their wages cut by 1/2 and some lost their pensions. Ms. Donatelli administered the site Airline Pilots for Obama. She started with only five pilots in July and grew to 1,000 pilots by October. They raised $30,000 for Obama’s campaign, and got a platform for their issues on transportation policy, safety issues, and bankruptcy reform.
High Touch: Hundreds of volunteers of all backgrounds worked for four days in June 2008 filling more than 100,000 sand bags in Columbus Junction, Iowa, when the Cedar and Iowa rivers both reached record flood stages. Despite heroic efforts by residents, immigrants and the Iowa National Guard, the downtown flooded when levee broke. Water nine feet deep rushed through the Senior Citizens Center and half of the Main Street businesses. The volunteers were left with calloused hands, sore backs, and broken hearts, but new relationships that will continue as they rebuild.
Freda Sojka owns Simply Soothing, a “one stop scent shop” that sells scented soaps and lotions from a small storefront on Main Street in Columbus Junction (pop. 2,000.) She wanted to run a joint advertisement for all the Main Street Merchants to get people to come back downtown to shop after the flood. She got three other store owners to donate but the nine Hispanic store owners did not respond to her emails. Then Carlos Rich, the Iowa organizer for the Midwest Immigrant Health Project, offered to talk to the Hispanic merchants. He had already interviewed them about local health issues. As Freda says, “It took him a lot longer than he thought it would! At least an hour for each store. But he got 9 out of 9 merchants to give us $10 each to buy the joint advertisement for our stores and restaurants.” Face to face discussion and good listening succeeded where emails never would. Next year Freda hopes to create a merchants association and in the future to include all of Louisa County.
Lessons: People want to be a worthwhile part of a worthwhile organizations. Past performance does not predict future behavior. Never assume citizens are apathetic or hostile because they have not joined yet. Maybe they are just waiting to be asked in the right way, whether High Tech or High Touch.
Joan Flanagan is the Fundraiser for the Center for New Community. A new edition of her classic The Grass Roots Fundraising Book will be out in 2010.
*Photo from Des Moines Register