King Harold and the Starlight Fantastic – Part 1 of 2

Here's another story about fundraising:

Once, in a fabled and far off time, there was a knight who served a hardworking but relative poor king named Harold, who ruled a kingdom called “Starlight Fantastic.” The realm of “Starlight Fantastic” was a place where youth could go to sort things out, find recreation and receive counseling that would keep them interested in the crusades but also keep them from marauding friendly villages while they were waiting to join the crusades.

This particular knight, whose name was Sir Mark the Benign, was the leader of the Knights of the Funding Grail, a special group of knights bound by King Harold to devote their lives and fortunes to providing enough money for the kingdom to serve the needs of local youth. When King Harold and his minions were about to run out of money, which they did frequently, it was the responsibility of the Knights of the Funding Grail to provide whatever continuing support the King needed.

And that was, once again, the situation that had Sir Mark down in the dumps on this particular day. He was perplexed, he hadn't slept well the night before because he was thinking about what to do, and he was fast developing a bad attitude. To top it all off he thought he might have symptoms of the flu. But in reality, when he thought about it seriously, he knew he had a very difficult problem as he sought to serve his sovereign King Harold in the kingdom of Starlight Fantastic.

Sir Mark's difficulty was no usual kind of knightly predicament. It didn’t have to do with his armor not being shiny or his sword not being razor sharp. It didn’t have to do with the knightly food served in the dining hall or the availability of fair damsels to woo.

Neither was Sir Mark’s problem the result of any lack of enthusiasm for the work with young people at Starlight Fantastic. In fact, he was very enthusiastic about his work; he got along well with the young people especially those young boys who were all full of young knightly desire to launch themselves into the next crusade and win both honor and the hands of fair damsels.

Sir Mark's difficulty didn’t stem from an inability to plan fundraising programs to obtain support for King Harold’s programs either. In fact Sir Mark had great ability when it came to conceiving and planning wonderful and inspiring programs for winning new support for Starlight Fantastic.

Sir Mark’s trouble came because the people around him, including King Harold and his executive committee, his board, his program minions, were unable to figure out just how it was that Sir Mark was helping the Starlight Fantastic raise any money. Time and again Sir Mark put forth prodigious effort to create the most exquisitely crafted fundraising plan. He had a great imagination, he was a stickler for detail, and he polished each plan to perfection. But each time King Harold reviewed the Starlight Fantastic budget, there didn’t seem to be very much more money than there had been in the previous year.

For example, one day Sir Mark came to King Harold and his executive committee with a plan to raise $1 million. That was the amount that King Harold said was needed to make the budget balance for the year, and the executive group was meeting just then to find a way to care for this considerable shortfall.

Sir Mark’s fundraising plan was elegant, well-crafted, simple in design and straightforward of application. He would take the Damsels In Distress program at Starlight Fantastic, and lift it up for special funding; he would then find 25 princes of the realm to make major designated gifts to the Fair Damsels Project, and that would, in turn, free other funds for more general use, thus making King Harold and his executive committee look like geniuses. Everybody immediately saw the wisdom of this fine planand thought Sir Mark was certainly the best of fundraisers.

We'll continue with this story tomorrow and see if those fellows really did accomplish something here.