Calling KTEH!

Through our favorite volunteer organization One Brick, Greg and I volunteered to take calls at KTEH, local public TV station for San Francisco and San Jose, for their fundraiser drive last night. They provided us a dinner, and then there was a brief training session with a checklist/script and additional brief instructions, and then we all took our positions at the phones.

I remember watching those fundraisers through the years with the people answering phones, and I remember wondering who these people were and how they got to do this job. Well, here we were! Brrrrng! "Hello, thank you for calling KTEH, may I take your pledge?"

The hostess was hilarious! She could read the teleprompter on cue and ad lib like the professional she is, and she had two different co-hosts to present varying "thank you gifts" to the viewers for pledging an array of amounts to help fund this station. Gifts were DVDs, CD-roms and guidebooks about American railroads & trains and Barry Manilow DVDs and CDs, plus concert tickets to his show in February 2008.

The phones were quiet at first, and we all (about 20 of us volunteers) looked at each other with a bit of concern, but soon after the speakers described the gifts the viewers would receive in return, the phones started ringing off the hooks - $75, $200, $365, "Thank you, we appreciate your pledge"! Fun!

I saw that when we took calls, the camera would focus in on us individually. Greg and I took at least 8 calls each so our 15 minutes of fame was nicely captured over a few of those calls. And each pledger we talked to seemed so nice, friendly and so giving...what a great experience! Plus, we got to see the behind-the-scenes activities in the control room and with the cameras. Fun!