We had to make calls to strangers to see if they were interested in what we were doing. What I found from calling organizations is that some of them seemed ecstatic to meet you and talk to you while others seemed go be having a bad day. The main charity that I had to call was very friendly and happy to hear that I wanted to make a contribution. This person answered every question accurately and with a great attitude. You could tell right away they liked working towards their cause. Other people would not have answers to a lot of questions and didn’t sound as happy to talk to someone willing to make a contribution.

As of fundraising, it is not as easy as I originally thought. My group and I have been having a hard time deciding on what type of fundraiser we are going to do. Also, it is not so easy to abide by the school’s rules and find something appealing for people to buy to help us out with our project. Often, we will have to wait a few days to hear back from someone who has to approve the fundraiser and then they will tell us a few rules that we have to follow.

When you are trying to find out information about a specific charity, it may be a good idea to talk to someone rather than just look at words on a web page. This gives you a more personal feel to the charity and the people involved. I personally do not have any awkwardness when talking to unknown people on the phone. I often have to make phone calls for my parents and have been making my own appointments for about a year. When I called my organization, the person who answered seemed very friendly and answered all my questions quickly and with a good attitude. She seemed very eager to talk to me.

I don think its very hard to analyze whether or not a charity is a good investment of my time or money. Once you have solid proof that the charity is working towards something that benefits society and you speak to people that sound excited about what they do its not hard to know whether or not you should invest in them. I think that good organizations are the ones that are happy to give back to society.

I think its very helpful to look at a tax returns from charities to see if they are working towards a legitimate cause. When I looked at my organization I found that they were a very good cause to donate to. They used a small amount of money to fund raise and made TONS of money off of it. Also, the people working for this cause were being paid an average amount of money. Not a whole lot of money went into day to day operations and stuff like that, only a rational amount was given to that. In one year they raised more than $1,000,000 and they only used about $10,000 to raise it!

It is important to look at the numbers (tax returns) before making an investment because that way you know how the charity works and whether it is working towards a cause or not. If you start to see that a big portion of the money is going into management and not into the cause then the charity is probably not legitimate. This is just a group of people trying to receive money that is not theirs. They are basically stealing money from people who actually need it.

a. One of our first assignments was to put three things in a brown paper bag and then show how they represent us to our team mates. What I learned from this was that I am very different than some of the people on my team. What I learned about the people around me is what type of people they are and what concerns them. I learned that some of them are very creative and fast thinkers who can come up with solutions very quickly.

b. Our fundraiser will basically be asking for money outside of Target. We have alway seen people standing outside asking for money for a certain cause so we figured that we would do that too because you do not have to ask the school for permission, but instead you just have to ask the store. We will be holding it sometime this weekend.

1. When creating a mission it was difficult to pinpoint what exactly we wanted to do. We decided that we were going to help child trafficking issues but we were not sure if we wanted to help the children themselves or help the organization bust trafficking sites. Our vision is basically to have less and less children who have been scarred by these experiences.

2. I expect to learn from reaching out to organizations. I also expect them to be eager to hear about young people who want to help out with such a serious topic. I also expect them to be surprised that we care at all because I know that I would be surprised if a group of teenagers was interested in child trafficking.