Message From the Captain #11

Ahoy Mateys! How about this snow? I didn’t realize that the Arctic Ocean was one of the ports o’call for the LLS Mentorship this season, but it sure feels that way. Hopefully everyone stayed safe and sound over the weekend. I am still bummed out that both our big storms this winter came in on the weekend and so we lost no time at work but lost training time. Sometimes Cap’n Art is just like a school kid! My exercise this weekend was primarily shoveling out the walkways of some of my widowed and/or infirm neighbors, so at least I got a good upper body workout out of the deal.

With recommitment past for the Shamrock Team, and the race in four more weeks for the Mardi Gras crew, things are moving right along. There are some of you that I hear from regularly about how your mentees are doing. But I don’t get this from everyone. So if you would, can you give me a brief report about how your mentees are doing? Ideally, it would be good to know (1) who has recommitted (2) how close are they to their minimum (3) what concerns do you have about any of them (4) what plans do you know of for them to close the gap? Please copy Cate on this analysis.

I think that your goal in your note this week – because you have already provided plenty of ideas – is to try to reach out to anyone who is under 50% of their minimum and see if you can meet with them to come up with a plan to get them the rest of the way. Of course if you have some specific ideas to get them, go for it. In particular, are any of your mentees due in your opinion to send out a reminder email? I know that I am (for the summer season). I sent my first note nearly two weeks ago, and I got a flurry of donations, and now one comes in every few days. So it is time for me to send out an update. Human nature being what it is, my note of mid January is now buried in everyone’s in-box. And of course, if you have mentees who have not sent a letter, see if you can motivate them to do this. Even though I personally get a lot better fundraising response to my emails than to my letters, my letters are always good for a half dozen or so donations, and every single donation is important.

Please remind all your mentees about the Silent Mile on the 20th. This is a really good training for everyone to participate in, because they can meet all of the team patient honorees, and also meet teammates from summer and 10K teams, and from the other sports.

With me now fundraising and mentoring for the summer team, I will try not to get confused each week about my captainly duties, and I will still be involved with your team. I also know that especially for Susie, the spring and cycle team are essentially one because of the timing, and that you will have mentees at different stages of fundraising. So there is less urgency for the cyclists to be up on their fundraising – if they are new. If they have been involved all along, then definitely you will want them to have a good bit of their funds raised by now.

Please let me know if you need anything, if you want to meet and review any concerns with your mentees, or just touch base to discuss how things are going. We arrive at our first port of call in less than four weeks! How Cool!

GO TEAM!
Cap’n Art