Just getting the annual newspaper sales day and letter-writing campaign organized was a big enough task. Neither I nor any other executive board members felt we could spare the time or the energy to double that effort. Undaunted, McNamara moved ahead alone. As mayor of Livonia and later as Wayne County executive, he'd been holding profitable fund-raising breakfasts for charities, scholarships and other causes. They go to lunch and dinner all the time.
Lunch splits up their day and takes too much time.
Dinner means the wife or husband has to set aside a whole evening that they'd rather spend somewhere else together. So they don't participate. They end up sending you money, but they don't come. And what you want them to do is come and see what the organization is doing to help kids, so that maybe they'll want to help out, too, in the future. The donors have a good time, we make money and everybody's at work before 10 a.m.