Sandra S. Lawn
Festival Chair
St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival
Sandra is very busy with her responsibilities as chair of the festival board, leading the meetings and fulfilling any duties that spring from that role. What I was interested in was Sandra’s duties as Chair of Fundraising! She tells me, “my duties are many – from organizing the fund raising team, in many cases making “the ask” and assisting with fundraising events – in some cases leading the effort." Ms. Lawn is very “hands on” and it sounds like her dedication and devotion helps inspire others in the continued efforts to offer such wonderful performances to so many audiences! Fundraising does come with some challenges that perhaps we, the audience and recipients of these great performances, do not see. Sandra states that, “One of the main challenges is maintaining financial stability”. She goes on to say, that “Our fund raising campaigns are run using the experience of major campaigns where I have been able to learn the basics of running a successful campaign, e.g. putting a major expansion on the Brockville and Area YMCA (opened when I was president) and being chair of the Friends of the Prescott Public Library when we put together a $575,000 expansion. Over the years we became better and better at writing grant proposals, mostly as a team.” Other minor “challenges” Sandra has dealt with were the few internal conflicts that she handled smoothly. She is wise however, having a written policy on conflict resolution, which fortunately has yet been used. That would then answer my question about “egos” with all the actors, volunteers, directors, etc. There seems to be no problems to overcome here.
(To be continued)
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