Today we’re going to discuss profiting from heartache. Death mostly. Does this not seem as fun as my last post? Sorry, but if I’m sad you can just suck it up and just be depressed too.
Misery likes company. I’m no different.
On Tuesday Sept. 24, 2019 the Women’s Choice Center of the Quad Cities held their annual fundraising gala. This center focuses on helping women, all in the hope of saving children. They offer clothes, diapers, medical procedures, counseling, and more, free of charge. In order to make these life saving services possible, the Women’s Choice Center depends desperately on donations.
Hence the center’s main fundraiser, their annual gala.
Attendee’s walked into the Waterfront Convention Center, which may I say, is a high class establishment, and started the evening with an assigned seat and catered dinner. I’m talking tea, coffee, water in a fancy glass, salad with assorted greens, hot dinner rolls, butter in the shape of a ROSE (I was amazed), classy chicken, and cake. Our Sodexo cafeteria could never compete.(https://us.sodexo.com/home.html seriously Sodexo I hope you see this post because you need to get your crap together). Anyway, my point is they went HIGH CLASS. I loved it.
Besides food, attendees listened to speeches from those involved in the center, we heard stories from those who received help from the organization, and we watched a video of what abortions truly look like. Watching an abortion isn’t something most people put on their bucket list, and for most it’s an extremely disturbing procedure to view. It was for that exact reason that the Women Choice Center projected the video onto their screens. Not to scare, but to educate. It wasn’t out of hate, it was out of love for their cause.
Needless to say, there were many tears during their event. But the question remains, why make a gloomy gala when they could’ve instead just told their happy stories and pictures of cute babies? Studies have shown that sad marketing projects higher donations than happy marketing. This is because viewers react to sadness in a way that makes them want to solve the problem at hand. https://associationsnow.com/2017/07/happy-sad-nonprofit-marketing/
Myself (left) and two friends from SAU attending the gala
Last but definitely not least, why did I choose to focus on the Women’s Choice Center for my post about PR and communication?
Because today I added my nephew’s name to their memorial wall for babies.
He was my sister’s first child. He made me an aunt for the first time. My parents are now grandparents.
I will never be able to hold my nephew. I will never visit my sister in the hospital for his birth, never give him advice on how to sneak out of the house, never attend his graduation, his wedding. I am grieving something that was never there, yet so present and real it’s been hard to breathe since his death.
How do I go to class tomorrow when I know my sister and brother in law are burying their first child? How do I tell people the reason my eyes are swollen is for something I’ll never hold? How do I console my sister when every time I call her my chest shakes into heaving sobs? How do I thank God for my life when I would give it up for my sister’s son?
My questions will never be answered.
He was named after Saint Jerome and Saint Michael, the two saints who had feast days on his death. It’s been getting easier to cope, but I’ll never forget this pain.
For Jerome Michael Gipson. You are truly loved.
to donate to help women and children, click here: https://womenschoicecenter.org/support-us/
Megan's Gossip 