Discussion»Questions»Current Events and News» I recently ran a half marathon that attracted more than 5,000 participants. Have you ever been part of the organizing committee for a public
This was a fluke thing I was totally unprepared for. I sent my oldest son to a charter school for a couple of years. They did a lot of things really well, but they didn't have a library. I volunteered to set up the library, but there was no funding for books, supplies, or anything related to it. So, I got the idea to host a "garage sale." I asked parents to donate pretty much anything. Any books they donated would go into the library and any household goods would be put up for sale. So, I think in all, I probably had a few hundred families donate things. I didn't get any volunteers to help with any of the prep. The parents I asked were "too busy" to help, but two moms agreed to help on the day of the sale, and they showed up after I set everything up alone. As far as customers go, we probably had 1,500-2,000 people actually buy things. It was so crazy I went through the crowd, grabbing parents I knew and teachers and assigning them jobs, whether they wanted them or not.
The library turned out pretty epic though. I was super proud of that. Between that and donations from local book stores, the school got an instant library with over 1,000 titles. The kids and teachers loved it.