I’m writing this on 2/13. I’m a little cranky tonight, kind of overdone and Sunday-nightish and muddled. I am looking at a library book that’s due tomorrow and I’m barely quarter of the way through. There’s a mini-mountain of laundry on the floor, glaring at me accusingly. I have three good choices: read, do laundry, sleep.

Instead I’m going to bitch about art fundraisers.

I went to one tonight, and actually, it started off pretty well. Food, drink, art, check/check/check. I went with my excellent nephew and ran into friends. I put in a bid on a painting (and got it). There was a decent band. For some reason, when they started playing “96 Tears”, the party caught on fire. Hipsters and oldsters and art snobs and 3-year-olds hit the dance floor, the raffle was excellent (I won a salon haircut!), true fun was had.

The derailing moment that came for me and quite a few others towards the end of the party. A few errors occurred in quick succession that dramatically lowered the good will and spiked the tempers. It all had to do with a lack of crowd control, an unprepared staff, and timing issues. I ended up leaving in frustration. I doubt I’m the only one.

So hey! Art gallery fundraising event organizers! You did good on the food, music, space, art, and raffle. But here are some tips to avoid the bad vibes and grouchy blog posts:

• Create a schedule, share it, keep it with you, and stick to it. That way, you won’t forget really important announcements (example: hastily telling several dozen people that they have to pay for their auctions right that moment. That’s asking for an Art Snob Stampede!)
• Thank everybody (including your guests) publicly — but not by name, because you will leave someone out and that is even more horrible. I don’t care if you are bummed that you didn’t make as much money as you wanted (or whatever), thank your attendees and the people that went above and beyond to put extra money into your till.
• Don’t harangue us to give you more money. Admittedly, the pitch is tricky — you don’t want to sound too needy, either. But “People! You need to buy more tickets and bid on more art!” shouted into a mic periodically makes us want to take our money back from you.
• Wear a name tag or a shirt or blinking sign that indicates that you are a staff member. Circulate; identify problems and work fast to fix them. Us wandering around trying to find someone in charge is just hellish.
• Computers and printers are easy to obtain. Forcing two stressed-out humans to hand-write receipts and poke desperately at a calculator while a seething, impatient throng stares at them by is just so avoidable. There is no excuse for understaffing and underequipping the extremely-important process of us giving our hard-earned cash to you.

I’m finishing this post on 2/14. Now that I slept on it, I see my points are valid, but overall the broken bureaucracy didn’t dim too much my memory of the event, which was pretty good (there were cupcakes). Plus, they did the most important thing right — there was not a cheese cube to be found.

And besides, when they do contact me to arrange payment, I’ll be the owner of a painting — the subject of which includes a tiny polar bear. Tiny polar bear!