Why a non-HS girls team? well since I have 2 sisters who came through the program and a pair of great-grand aunts who were ground breakers for women .. I pay more than a bit of attention to womens athletics. Also, having coached at all the levels, I know that quite often the older kids don't appreciate freebies, and in fact by high school they should be able to earn enough money to go on their own. I really wanted a whole team to go, so that no one would be left behind .. also this was an experiment I was actually thinking about trying to figure out how to sponsor a whole team for a season to reduce the financial burden on SCAA.

The contact person was Cheryl Chow, a very active participant in SCAA, and in the local political scene in general. Her first request was that SCAA be able to use the tickets in their raffle fundraiser instead. I explained that I wanted a whole non-HS girls team to go, no raffle, no fundraising, no competition .. I happen to believe that the disinfranchised youth are the very people who don't do well (or don't have parents to help them do well) in the fundraising, competitions etc and then they'd have no chance at going to see the game even though they'd probably get more out of it.

She talked with the board and agreed that my conditions would hold (and I have the emails to prove it) so by the time they got around to picking up the tickets I'd compiled about 18 tickets in 2 rows, more than enough to send a whole team and still have a pair or two for their raffle.

Weeks pass, no donation letter, no newsletter. Because the Sonics are willing to do things like scrolling the teams name on the screen .. but I have to find out what team got the tickets .. so the week before the game I send an email to find out. I then hear that they were so happy that the tickets helped them raise $5K in the fundraiser raffle and that they were waiting for the tickets to be distributed before sending me the donation letter.

Writing this still pisses me off, and its been over a month since the game..

Apparently Cheryl opted to change the plans, and not tell the board that there were stipuations on the donation. My friend on the board said that they weren't informed which, for the board in general could be true, but the fact of the matter was that the board president (Grace) was cc'd on all of the email discussions and was well aware of the stipulations. Then they said that my problem was with Cheryl, and not with SCAA .. but as far as any donor would be concerned, Cheryl is an agent of the organization. After a few discussions an agreement was struck for a letter of apology and the drafting of guidelines for donation handling. You'd have thought that a 30+ year non-profit would already have that but I guess not.

To cap it off, at the game I checked the seats (I sit a few rows in front of them) and out of 18 seats, I see only about 5 kids of around the age of membership in SCAA.

Am I happy? no
Do I believe that Cheryl Chow (and SCAA) defrauded me of the tickets? probably.
Will I be donating to them ever again? Hah, they'll be lucky if I ever remove this post from the internet.

Back to more pleasant things, it was Elena's bday this past month, she took a little vacation since I'd been gone so long. While she was gone I bought her a new Scooter (Yamaha Vino 125) and enrolled her at the local Motorcycle Safety Foundation course. I also cleaned out the storage room and started reorganizing the garage (to accomodate the scooter). I even managed to hang the new plasma screen tv above the fireplace, and put togeather Cracker's new cage. I'm going to be busy cleaning for the next couple of weekends since I won't have time after that ... because ...

I'm finally having ankle surgery (May 13th) to remove the bone spurs and (probably) clean up the ankle join in general. I'll be off of it for about 4-6 weeks and then rehab .. no activities for about 3-4 months ... if this goes well I'll probably do the other ankle next year.