Fence Line Rescue · Season One · Episode 5 · Footnote’s turn
Is my nonprofit ready for an auction? Every board asks. The answer is usually already in your records.
[Editor note: IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: HEADER (16:9)] Caption: “The goat is not a voting member.”
Let the minutes reflect that the board meeting was called to order at seven o’clock on a cool September evening, in the barn, because the office holds one turtle, two humans, and a great deal of opinion, and the board is larger than that.
Present: the Board Chair, in a sweater vest and bow tie. Three other board members, in folding chairs. The Director, standing, because she cannot sit when she’s nervous. The Administrator, with the laptop and her reading glasses on their beaded chain. The Fundraiser, with a clipboard and a new phone she keeps checking like it might hatch.
Also present: one space heater, one projector borrowed from the church, and one bedsheet stapled to the barn wall as a screen.
Also present, non-voting: the dog, the horse (head through the stall window), and the goat.
Also present, voting in spirit: me. I was on the keyboard. I am always on the keyboard. It’s warm and it’s where the information is.
The agenda was printed on a single sheet and placed on the hay bale beside the Board Chair.
The goat ate it.
I’d like the minutes to reflect that the goat is not a voting member.¹
Old Business
You’ll recall the dog’s last report. Door to door. A pie that became twelve. A quilt with an empty square. A gift basket from a woman who said “not today” and meant “next week.” A folder of envelopes, minus one pizza, plus one pizza.
You’ll also recall the Board Chair’s verdict: wonderful, and the board won’t set a date until somebody proves this rescue is actually ready.
He wasn’t being difficult. He spent forty years at a bank watching people fall in love with ideas and forget to check the floor before they danced. He’s the one who asked “What’s the plan?” on his first day, and he has asked it at every meeting since, sometimes out loud, sometimes just with his eyebrows.
The dog thinks he’s grumpy. He isn’t. He’s careful. Careful people are the ones who still have a barn in ten years.
The Honest Worries
The Board Chair stood up and took his glasses off his forehead.
“I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I love what you’ve built. But we’re small. We are seven runs out of fourteen, a goat, a turtle, and a borrowed barn. What happens if we hold an auction and nobody comes? What’s the risk if it flops? I don’t want to embarrass this rescue in front of the whole city.”
Nobody said anything. The space heater ticked.
The dog, who cannot bear a silence, brought the Board Chair a sock.
The Board Chair took it. He held it the way you’d hold a stranger’s baby: carefully, and with no idea why.
“Thank you, Banjo,” he said, and he meant it, which is the moment I decided I liked him.
The Checklist
The Fundraiser stood up. Her clipboard was shaking. It always shakes at first. Then it stops.
“I found the ‘Is an auction a good fit?’ checklist,” she said, “and I’d like to go through it with you. Four things.”
I sat up. I enjoy a checklist the way the dog enjoys a fire hydrant: deeply, and with a sense of personal mission.
“One. A clearly defined mission.”
The Administrator clicked, and the projector showed our sentence on the bedsheet, the one I edited with the delete key last spring:
We take in the animals who fell through the cracks at the edge of the city, and we get them home.
Check.
“Two. A specific community we serve.”
The edge of the city. The line Lexington drew so horse farms would always have room. Everyone on the far side of that line knows where we are, because we’re the barn with the hand-painted sign.
Check.
“Three. A low-risk way to raise money. The online auction has no up-front cost. If it goes badly, we’ve lost time, not money.”
The Board Chair’s eyebrows went down a quarter inch. On a banker, that is a standing ovation.
Check.
“Four. A group that would rather tell stories than send constant appeals for donations.”
The Fundraiser didn’t say anything else. She just turned around.
The dog was wagging so hard his whole back half was a different time zone. The horse had his head through the stall window, very still, listening. I was on the keyboard, looking unimpressed, which is how I look when I am very impressed.
Three walking, barking, neighing stories.
Check.
But Who Will Bid?
The Board Chair nodded slowly. “All right,” he said. “That’s a good list. But a list doesn’t bid. Who’s going to bid? We don’t have a donor database. We don’t have a mailing list. We have…”
He looked around the barn for the word.
I’d been waiting for this all evening. I’d been waiting for it since spring, honestly.
I stood up, stretched one leg at a time, and walked across the keyboard. Very deliberately. Ctrl. Tab. Enter. I have practiced this. I am a professional.
The bedsheet changed.
At the top, in large letters: People Who Said Yes.
When the Administrator first typed that title last spring, the list had eleven rows. A neighbor who called about a dog on a roof. A woman with an excellent throwing arm and a mail slot. A man with a trunk full of towels.
The Administrator scrolled.
Every towel. Every ride to the Vet. Every bag of food left at the gate. The Feed Store Owner. The Baker. The Farrier. The barber, the fishing guide, the photographer. The Quilting Circle, every one of them. The pizza place, twice. The gift shop owner, moved from one column to the other. Every person who’d bought a dog biscuit at a bake sale that failed. Every volunteer who’d ever scooped a kennel run on a Saturday.
She scrolled, and scrolled, and the rows kept coming down the bedsheet like rain down a window.
Nobody spoke. The space heater ticked. Even the goat stopped chewing.
“Those are your bidders,” the Fundraiser said quietly. “They already said yes once.”²
The Board Chair sat down. He didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he took his glasses all the way off and rubbed his eyes, and I chose to believe it was the dust.
[Editor note: IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: KEY MOMENT 1] Caption: “Those are your bidders. They already said yes once.”
For the Cat
There is one row I need to tell you about. It isn’t a dramatic row. It’s in the middle, between a towel and a bag of kibble.
Two weeks before the meeting, the Mail Carrier brought an envelope addressed in handwriting I knew before I knew why I knew it. Shaky, slanting, the loops of someone who learned penmanship back when penmanship was graded.
Inside was a check from very far away, and a note.
Three words.
For the cat.
The Bookseller. She’d heard, somehow, the way news travels in a city that still has neighbors. She’d sent what she could from wherever she is now, a place with no cats allowed and, I hope, a good radiator.
The Administrator put her on the list. Of course she did. If they gave, they go on the list.
When the projector scrolled past that row, I read it twice.
Then I got down from the keyboard and went to sit somewhere else for a while. Behind the feed bins, in the dark, where nobody would think to look for a professional.
The dog thought to look. The dog always thinks to look.
He didn’t say anything, which for him is a heroic act. He just lay down on the other side of the feed bin, close enough that I could hear him breathing, and stayed.
I’ll leave it there.
[Editor note: IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: KEY MOMENT 2 → placed at the end of “For the Cat” in the paste; kept here as the master list.]
The Consultant
When I came back, the Fundraiser had her phone on speaker in the middle of the folding table.
The Consultant has a calm voice that sounds like it has seen many barns and liked most of them. She didn’t pitch anything. She just asked questions, and the questions made a plan.
A date: a seven-day online auction, in late autumn, finishing on a Saturday night so people can watch the end together.
A goal: the roof over the horse’s stall, plus a season of hay, written down where everyone can see it.
A calendar: what to post on which day, who calls whom, when the item photos go up.
And one rule she said twice, so I put it in a footnote in my head.
“Registrations are everything,” she said. “The people on that list don’t count until they register. Your whole job between now and opening day is getting them registered.”
The Board Chair wrote that on an index card and put it in his vest pocket.
The Last Question
There was one more thing. There’s always one more thing with the Board Chair.
“All right,” he said. “Last question. Who’s going to make sure the people on that list actually show up?”
The barn went quiet again.
Then he answered it himself. “I will. I’ll call ten people. Personally. Not an email.”
The Director looked at him like he’d handed her a set of keys.
“I’ll call twelve,” said a board member in the back row, who I have since moved up a column.
The motion was made. The motion was seconded. All in favor.
Every hand went up. The horse, through the window, lifted his head, which I am counting.
The motion carried. The date was set.
The dog celebrated by spinning in a circle, which he does when joy outruns his legs, and his tail knocked over the space heater. It was off. Nobody was hurt. The goat was offended and has filed a grievance, by staring.
Unfinished Business
After the meeting, the Administrator found an email I’d sent to the entire board earlier that afternoon, during a nap on the keyboard.
Subject line: none. Body: a single line.
jjjjjjjjjjjj
“Footnote,” she said, “that might be the most honest thing ever sent to a board.”
I stand by it.³
Then the Fundraiser stood in the middle of the barn and looked at the calendar, and the goal, and the index card in the Board Chair’s pocket, and said what everybody was thinking.
“Now,” she said, “we have to tell the whole city.”
Everyone turned.
Everyone looked at the horse.
The horse looked behind himself, to see who they meant.
¹ She has, however, eaten more of the agenda than most voting members read.
² I’d like to note that I said this first, in Episode 2, in a footnote. Nobody reads footnotes. That’s what they’re for.
³ Translated: “We are ready, and I am tired.”
Next time: Parsnip becomes the most famous horse who never won a race.
How Real Rescues Do This
Is my nonprofit ready for an auction? Check your list
The Board Chair asked the right questions. The answers were already sitting in Footnote’s spreadsheet.
Lesson: readiness is a list, not a feeling. Online auctions work best for groups that already have:
- A clear mission people can repeat in one sentence.
- A specific community that knows who you are and where you are.
- A real supporter network. Your list of past helpers (every towel, ride, pie, and volunteer shift) is your future bidder list. If you haven’t been keeping one, start today.
- Board buy-in. Let skeptics ask hard questions, then give them a job. “I’ll call ten people” is worth more than a hundred emails.
- A date, a goal, and a promotion calendar, set before you start gathering bids.
Groups like this often work with Your Charity Auction, which has no up-front cost and pairs you with a personal consultant who walks you through every step, from the first item to closing night.
Fence Line Rescue and everyone in it are fictional. The fundraising ideas are real.
Keep reading
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