It was bound to happen eventually.
The ambitious United Way Estevan team didn't necessarily hit the wall last weekend, after all, the numbers on the tote board exceeded $336,000 when the 5 o'clock broadcast bell rang to signal the end of the telethon, but certainly not the end of this year's campaign to raise $350,000.
Was it an overly ambitious target?
Last year's goal was $335,000 and the UW team and the community pretty well sailed through that line and well beyond, so this year's goal-setting crew weren't off the mark in an attempt to raise even more for the 18 member agencies who do a lot of the great and necessary work within the community to make it such a great place to live in.
We can think of any number of reasons why this year's event didn't quite get to the finish line in the allotted time.
Oil patch income is somewhat stilted this year. Investment money is harder to get, cash flow isn't quite as prolific as it once was.
There is a new generation of employees at local businesses who aren't as well ingrained in the nuances of participating in the local United Way campaign. These two companies have been super powerful supporters in the past and, no doubt, will continue to be, but maybe a new spirit of what this is all about, has yet to build within the ranks. We have well over 400 businesses in Estevan and the immediate area alone. Many of them are new and are being staffed by newcomers. Perhaps there is some indoctrination work to do, to get everyone on the same team.
After all, if UW doesn't work, that means 18 local non-profit and charitable agencies will be knocking on our doors individually, seeking our support.
So how do we want to handle this?
Now, having looked at where the shortfall may have been located this year, let's look at the hard facts.
The Energy City is still Saskatchewan's most generous population base and Saturday's UW telethon simply proved it. That is why we're celebrating the results, not lamenting a miniature speed bump.
When communities twice our size expect to raise just 40 per cent of what we do in Estevan, and they consider their UW campaigns a complete success, how could we call our $336,000, 33-hour event a failure ever?
Over the years UW organizers have carefully crafted achievable goals and those targets have been raised pretty well every year while the hours devoted to the actual telethon event, have gradually decreased. At some point, the two elements of raising money and time restrictions were going to intersect.
At the time this piece was being written, Estevan still had the opportunity to be the first community in the country to reach its UW fundraising goal. That's still a huge factor.
So there was no community failure last weekend, in fact it was just a big reminder that we're givers, not takers in the Energy City, and that point has been made very clear.
