On Saturday, July 9th, Boston Sisters, NSR Pure Elle, and NSR Rosetta Stone, met up with NSR Holly Unlikely from the Cleveland Mission to conduct a ministry of presence and penny drive on the first Saturday of Bear Week.
Weather being beautiful and just right for manisfestation, we made our way from the East End, near Commercial and Pearl St with our breathtaking visage and the mini-bucket borrowed from NSR Sandra Musique.
the usual Ptown march ensued, and we three nuns ran the gamut of ways to discuss the sisters, our charities, our work, as well as asking for donations. We got our first donation just after we left the house, which boded well for the evening.
Lots of camera action, plenty of smile raised on happy people. Holly got a patter going about “what are all these bears doing at Nun Week?”, as well as “we raise awareness, we raise funds, we raise eyebrows”, that is a good line to work with while in the public sphere, particularly if there are children. Pure Elle also go more time to dive in to develop talking about the sisters, as limited # of nuns had us all hopping to talk about things.
We stopped in a few key places along commercial street, and let the folks come to us, which worked immensely well. Lots of recognition from the crowd, limited amount of folks who looked past you, more folks wanting to talk directly to you.
At one point, we dived into a restaurant where some friends of mine were having dinner, and we crossed paths with a bridal party who were on a scavenger hunt. We helped cross off a few items from the bride’s list, including a magic trick (the same that Sandra used in Club Cafe), a dirty phone message to the groom’s home by one of my friends, as well as helped the bride build up to the 40 business cards she needed.
After NSR Holly peeled off the group once we reached her hotel, Pure Elle and I made our way back to the East End, garnering more pictures and more donations, arriving back to the temporary condo around 12:30 and finishing up around 1 am
$ total raised was $234.93, many coins. The funds will be split as follows: $172.95 towards the School One scholarship, with brings that overall total to $1,000, leaving NSR Dearest the freedom to choose any date in which to have the donation hand off. The balance, $61.98, will go towards the LGBT Asylum Task Force funds. I’ve personally donated 5% of my sales at Bear Market on Sunday the 10th, to the Provincetown Soup Kichen, one of the Bear Week beneficiaries.
Upside? Smaller # of nuns made us a very flexible and mobile group. Adhering to the time frame made it an earlier evening than expected. Downsides? Smaller # of nuns made it more work to get every penny, as each of us was engaged with folks, we lost the change to be engaged with other folks.
