OH MY GOSH!

["James Purchase" <jpurch@interlog.com>]

Will someone please give me a swift kick in the head........ (O.K, O.K.,
don't jostle... form an orderly line....)

I JUST REALIZED that for the past few weeks, I have been working on the
assumption that merchandise prizes would be needed for each First, Second
and Third place winner in each of the 12 categories (for a total of 36
prizes) in addition to Best of Show and People's Choice. In my mind, this
meant that I had to come up with 38 separate prizes..... and thus this led
to 101 solicitation e-mails.....

In reviewing the Proposal that it specified merchandise Prizes ONLY for the
First Place winners in addition to Best of Show and People's Chioce awards.
This meant 14 merchandise prizes.

How I forgot this is beyond me.....for some reason (delusions of grandeur
perhaps????), this fact totally slipped my mind when it came time to shake
out the prizes.

I did not expect it to be _this easy_ to get stuff donated to our cause. I
am rather embarrassed over the generosity of most of the companies who have
responded to date. If this keeps up, we may have a mountain of donations to
distribute to a mole hill of people.

My biggest concern is that I am starting to get nervous over the sheer
number of things which we might potentially have to ship. To be perfectly
honest, I had expected a lot less enthusiasm on the part of the companies I
have contacted..... I expeced it to be a real chore to scrape together the
prizes neded.

To date, of the 101 solicitation e-mail's I have sent out, 17 companies have
responded, 14 have agreed to donate, 2 declined and a third we had to
decline. An 18th is sitting on the fence (he asked for further info which I
sent him). From the 14 companies who responded with a YES, we have
potentially 23-28 separate prizes, depending upon how we split them up.

I anticipate that if the remaining companies respond in a similar manner, we
are going to be awarding "Prize Packages" rather than single items in a lot
of cases, and the shipping costs could mount up and bite us in the backside.
We are only budgeted for around $260.00 for shipping of prizes.

Thankfully, most of the manufacturers are giving Gift Certificates, which
will only cost us a stamp to award, and several companies have agreed to
ship the prizes at their own expense.

Now, it could be that the companies which have not yet responded don't
intend to do so at all.... but I wouldn't count on it.

Anyone have any suggestions or comments? Or should we just continue on our
merry way until we see exactly how _many_ items we have to deal with?

Do we want to award merchandise prizes ONLY to the First Place winners, as
originally discussed, or should we start thinking of the other 24 winners as
potential recipients of merchandise as well as ribbons? The Contest
Guidelines on the web site merely says:

11. The judges shall award 1st, 2nd, 3rd place awards within each category.
12. The judges shall also be requested to select an entry worthy of
receiving a Best of Show Award.
14. The website shall have a facility allowing the general public to submit
their choice for a People's Choice Award.

Nothing is said about the "nature" of the award....

James Purchase
Toronto

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