This is a blog post I never thought I’d have to write…… It’s a sad tale of failed charity. Here we go……
My family and I have been taking dance lessons at the Arthur Murray Redwood City Studio. We’ve been at it for about 3 years, plus or minus. Dance is both fun, and intimate, and as we’ve learned more the studio has started to feel more than just a customer/seller relationship. We laugh and dance and share and talk and dance and live and love and dance. Our first instructor, and very stern (and fun) Russian named Marina could channel a cross between a Marine Core drill sargent and a KGB officer! We loved her! “And ONE and TWO and THREE and FOUR!” she’s chant, while stomping her heel into the dance floor. Yes, I needed that much help to follow the beat. (My wife might say I still do!)
About a year into our lessons, my wife hurt her foot in the Rock and Roll half marathon (not so much fun, that one!) and I dragged my older daughter Alison to an evening session. Being a pre-teen at the time, it was close to impossible to get her to go. But she did. Then she fought against trying any dancing. But she did. She tried her hardest not to have any fun. But she did. As we were leaving, she sheepishly looked at me and asked if she could start taking lessons too. We signed up both our kids and now it was a whole family affair.
Marina eventually moved to Southern California and we lost track of her. There are strict anti-fraternization policies, for good reason, so we only heard updates via the other Arthur Murray staff. Over the next two years, we were instructed by several of the staff, but mostly by a tiny dynamo of a 20 something year old named Jules. Our kids love her.
So it’s totally understandable that when the COVID-19 pandemic started to rage across the world and the shelter-in-place orders started in San Mateo county on March 16th 2020, we worried for the hourly staff who would no longer be earning due to the studio closing. I had no idea what the franchise owners Daisey and Chris Lynam were planning for their employees. And I’m sure the Lynam’s had lots of issues of their own. Any relief packages had not yet been put in place by the Federal Government, so I totally understand. After all, over the last two weeks, there have been almost 10 million unemployment claims across the US, every one is scared, and customers for things like dance lessons are all re-evaluating their spending priorities.
I mean, look at the rise in unemployment from what has been called “the great recession of 2008.” It’s barely a bump compared to the red bars at the right of the graph, and this is just the first two weeks of jobless claims!
I have experience with crowdfunded benefits, having run a very successful campaign to help a 60+ year old school janitor who’s body was shattered by an errant driver while he was riding his motorcycle (look here and here for blog posts about that effort.) It raised $119k in just over 70 hours!
Right as the start of the pandemic was hitting home near where I lived, I received a very cheerful email asking the dance students to send in pictures of themselves in Dance Frame to get “Festival Points” that are used to earn promotions and the like. While I understood the goal, to keep the studio community connected as the world started to burn around us all, so that when we came out the other side we could get back to dance. I understood the goal, but the tone was off. Celebrate during the pandemic? Ask people to go out to take pictures of themselves in Dance Frame? So I hit “Reply” and wrote the following:
Hi there Matt Richter here. I get what you’re trying to do, and I’d like to offer the following.
This is just the beginning of a very long, very difficult time. People will lose jobs, become homeless, get sick and some may die. It’s much more serious than social media campaigns for points.
I’ve raised money for those in need. I suggest the following: we set up a donation campaign so that the students that have means can donate to support the hourly workers that will lose income. I raised $119,000 in 70 hours for a motorcycle accident victim so I do know what I’m talking about.
But I can’t do it on my own because I don’t have the contact list for all the students, nor do I have the list of those who would receive the benefits of such a fundraiser.
I don’t know much about the franchise owners, but if they can afford it, putting in matching funds is a good way to up total dollars donated. The studio could also give points for donations as well, as a thank you to those that can afford to give.
I offer my experience in making this happen. I’ll do it for nothing, but I need help from the studio and the owners to make it real. This is going to be long and hard. The best way through is for those of as that can, we do. And we offer help to those in need, like others have offered help to me in the past when I needed help (I spent 9 months in a wheelchair from a motorcycle accident).
In business, we often talk about finding a way to yes. I’m hoping we can find a way to yes. This has the potential to make a real difference to those associated with the studio. Please help me make it real.
Respectfully yours, and with hope,
Matt Richter, 3/16/2020
Now, when I wrote this, I had no idea what would happen or what response I’d get. But low and behold, I received a very positive response from one of the studio managers Fernanda. But progress was not easy. They were in uncharted territory. All of us are still in uncharted territory.
In hindsight, this is where things started to go sideways. Caught between the reality of the quickly changing day to day life, business policies that prevented any non-dance instruction related interaction, and the onset of symptoms (I don’t know, even now, if the manager I was working with just got sick or has Covid-19) things slowed.
In later communication Fernanda informed me that my email was going up the food chain but due to it’s unusual nature, they were seeking guidance from farther up the corporation. I get that, but come on, it’s a pandemic. (Once in college, I was talking with my dorm RA. Our dorm floor (Argo Hall, UCSD. The six floor… We called ourselves the Rain Gods because we were the top floor and no one could hide from our water balloons!) was planning on throwing a big party with different drinking games in each suite. I asked Rob, the RA, if I should inform the housing administration about our plans and how we planned to contain the mayhem. I’ll never forget his reply: “Sometimes it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.“)
I probed about just pushing ahead, but Fernanda was adamant that she had to honor her obligations to her employer and wanted to go through proper channels. Really, I wanted this too. I was hopeful the Lynams could provide matching funds or some other reward for helping out, so I wanted to engage with them to plan the program. But communication lagged. Life was quickly getting crazy, Fernanda wasn’t feeling well, and as a student I didn’t have access to the internal contact information for anybody!
So I stopped asking to go through channels and did it myself. I went to research franchise ownership, found names and spent money at whitepages.com to get the contact information independent of the employees. (The employees have always been very strict in adhering to company policy, as they should be.) I found the contact info I needed and got in touch with Daisey. We talked on the phone but she had a meeting starting in minutes, I gave my contact information and she promised to be on it the very next morning. That was four or five days before I started writing this post. No contact. Nothing.
But now, two weeks or so had passed. The scope of the pandemic was getting worse every day so I decided to launch on my own. But now a Facebook post about a dance studio didn’t have much pull compared to everyone who’s life was now upside down. I reached out to a few friends and a group I’m a member of. Things didn’t take off like when I raised money for John Bamber, the motorcycle accident victim. With no support from the franchise owners and my only real contact point being a manager who was caught in the middle, I realized it was an uphill climb I couldn’t do on my own, and I pulled the plug.
I’d like to thank my wife, Cheryl, who supported my effort an agreed that seeding the program with a $270 dollar donation was a good thing to do. I’d like to thank my friend Lee Scheuermann who donated $50 (to give is to get, I donated $50 to Mesa Harmony Garden in Santa Barbara that harvests food for locals in need) and to Bill Mebain, a member of a club that I’m in who donated as well.
I’m still troubled by this whole effort. I’m not sure I want to rejoin the studio when this is all over. We’re in a global crises the like of which the planet hasn’t seen in over 100 years. And I couldn’t get to yes.
Note: Feature Photo by Tom Pumford on Unsplash
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