Raise Money

Racine Williams stretched out her arms and began rotating like a pinwheel in slow motion. With a rhythmic, tick-tock quality, the 41-year-old perfectly cartwheeled to the left, and back to the right across the conference room of her Millersville office. Despite huffing and puffing through the last 50, she kept going until she reached a new personal record of 300. Her third annual cartwheel-a-thon Friday raised only $1,100, a third of her first outing. But Williams still takes on this odd, seemingly dizzying challenge because it's a cause she works for daily.

SEVERAL MONTHS AGO, I asked the question: Who should be our next president? Should we elect yet another member of what future historians, looking back on late 20th-century American political leadership, will refer to as "The Long String of Bozos"? Or should we have the courage and wisdom to boldly change course and place the future of our great nation -- and, yes, the world -- into the capable, experienced hands of a professional humor columnist?Imagine how totally shocked and surprised I was when many of you wrote to me, sometimes in crayon, and said: "Our next president should be YOU, Dave!

Chesapeake Music Hall is planning a supper club cabaret evening May 14 to raise money for the families of victims of the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.The music hall has doubled its admission price to $10 for the night, and will donate all the money from the gate to the Jefferson Memorial Fund, created to help victims' families with funeral, counseling and other expenses. Those who want to can pay the usual $5 admission fee, and that money also will go to the fund.Fifteen people died and 21 were injured when two students opened fire on their classmates and a teacher before killing themselves April 20 at Columbine High School.

SPRING IS JUST around the corner, despite our recent reminders of winter.Carrolltowne Elementary School has planned "Spring Fling '99" to celebrate and to raise funds for its playground.The school has been working for the past two years to raise money to replace aging and unsafe playground equipment and is hoping that the proceeds from Spring Fling '99 will enable it to purchase and install the new equipment.Spring Fling '99 will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the school. The event will feature family games for minimal cost, and food and bake tables, cake walks and Beanie Baby walks.

More than 1,000 people turned out for a carnival in Glyndon yesterday to raise money to offset medical expenses for Jake Rome, 6, who has a malignant brain tumor. Jake's father, Mark Rome, said organizers will not know how much was raised until later this week. The boy is undergoing chemotherapy.Pub Date: 3/29/99

APPEARANCES matter. Most folks know that.But somehow, Baltimore County Councilmen Joseph Bartenfelder and John Olszewski Sr. haven't grasped the idea that when it comes politics and public policy making, what you seem to be doing is just as important as what you're actually up to.If they had, they wouldn't have held fund-raisers during the county's quadrennial comprehensive rezoning cycle.Last January, council Chairman Kevin Kamenetz suggested that all councilmembers follow the established practice and refrain from raising campaign donations during the 14-month rezoning cycle.

After complaining for years about aggressive fund-raising by the General Assembly's Democratic leadership, Maryland's Republican legislators said yesterday that they will follow suit and attempt to raise an unprecedented $1 million for GOP candidates in 2002.The Republican lawmakers, who have raised no more than about $100,000 in past campaigns, said they had no choice if they are to remain competitive. Democrats waged a concerted fund-raising drive last year and added six legislative seats.

Dong Yi hadn't been at United Way of Central Maryland long before she heard it -- that quintessentially American way of raising money known as "the ask."Shortly after she arrived for a two-month immersion in the ways of organized fund raising, the 24-year-old translator for the China Charity Federation accompanied a United Way official to a meeting with employees of Giant Foods -- and was floored when he asked them outright to pledge $1,000 each."Just the way you raise money -- you ask people for money in a different way," Dong said.

CONGRESSIONAL Republicans are about to begin another rampage against public broadcasting.Because some public television stations -- WETA in Washington, D.C., and WGBH in Boston -- exchanged donor lists with the Democratic National Committee, Republicans are threatening to cut this year's funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.Their outrage is a bit strange, since Republicans' practice of slashing federal grants is one of the reasons stations must exchange lists to raise money.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, the Baltimore Democrat who was the top vote-getter in state history when she last sought office, raised more than $1.35 million last year in preparing to seek a third term in the November elections.Whom will she run against? Even she doesn't know yet. "I just don't think any of the elected [GOP] officials are going to take a shot this time," said a rueful James Burton, executive director of the state Republican Party.Yet the senator's campaign documents provide a colorful study in contradictions, and they suggest a candidate who runs scared when she runs for office -- even when a major opponent has not surfaced.

A Boot Camp fundraiser will be held from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Monday April 20 at City Dock to raise money for the annual KidWalk. The ladies of Even Keel, Easy Street and Precision Pilates will sponsor the Boot Camp, featuring fitness activities for all levels, from warm-up to a walk, jog or run through parts of Annapolis and Eastport. A $10 donation is requested. The KidWalk will be held at 7 a.m. May 2 at the Naval Academy Stadium. The 5-kilometer walk begins at 8 a.m., with festivities from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. The minimum cost is $25 for adults, $10 for children 12 and under, and $50 for families of up to four members.

Herbert Wilmer Findeisen Jr., a retired Baltimore educator and middle school principal, died Saturday at York Hospital in York, Pa., after being injured in an automobile accident near Bonneauville, Pa. The former longtime Randallstown resident was 77. The cause of the accident remains under investigation by Pennsylvania State Police, family members said yesterday. Mr. Findeisen had lived in Orrtanna, Pa., since 1992. Mr. Findeisen, the son of a Baltimore Transit Co. streetcar motorman and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised on Pelham Avenue.

Bruce Cleland's 5-year-old daughter had just completed two years of treatment for leukemia when he decided to raise a little money to help others affected by the disease. He asked some friends in New York to train for a marathon with him and collect some pledges from others. The response overwhelmed them: About three dozen people brought in $320,000. That was 1988. Now, those in Cleland's training and fundraising program are easy to spot in the nation's biggest running and biking races.

Hillary Clinton's financial troubles returned to the forefront of the Democrats' White House marathon yesterday as Barack Obama reported raising $40 million last month - double what the New York senator collected. The New York senator's $20 million take would be staggering in any other race. But she faces a rival who has shattered fundraising records, and this latest benchmark highlights Clinton's broader difficulties in catching up to Senator Obama of Illinois in the protracted fight for the Democratic presidential nomination.

For about a decade, students and teachers at Bel Air Middle School have participated in an annual initiative to raise money for the American Heart Association. But when the physical education teachers at the school announced that they were unable to coordinate the event this year, Charles Spinnato took action. Fearing that the fundraiser, called Hoops for Heart, would be canceled, the 13-year-old wrote a petition that was signed by 100 teachers and students at the school. He wasn't about to give up, he said.

About 200 kindergartners and first-graders sat on the gym floor and listened to a story that connected some disparate threads: a cat, the holidays and combating eye disease. The students at Youth's Benefit Elementary School in Fallston assembled recently to hear Samuel Polakoff read a story told from a cat's point of view about two families who come together in the spirit of Christmas. "I had the idea for a children's story, and I wanted to do more to raise money for glaucoma," the author said after the assembly.

Racine Williams stretched out her arms and began rotating like a pinwheel in slow motion. With a rhythmic, tick-tock quality, the 41-year-old perfectly cartwheeled to the left, and back to the right across the conference room of her Millersville office. Despite huffing and puffing through the last 50, she kept going until she reached a new personal record of 300. Her third annual cartwheel-a-thon Friday raised only $1,100, a third of her first outing. But Williams still takes on this odd, seemingly dizzying challenge because it's a cause she works for daily.

Frustrated by embarrassing financial troubles and concerned about a void in leadership, some NAACP members will gather at the organization's 98th annual convention in Detroit this weekend urging the group to take a new direction. Local branches say the Baltimore-based organization desperately needs a sophisticated fundraising strategy, better communication between leadership and the grass roots, and a major effort to recruit young members. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is struggling to recover from three years of budget shortfalls and has yet to begin a serious search for a new president and CEO to replace the one who quit nearly four months ago. While the NAACP's annual convention is typically the time when leaders articulate the organization's vision and priorities, local members say this year, that need is critical.

Lynn Jaquet was impressed when she learned that students at Bel Air Elementary School were going to raise money to fight leukemia, particularly given that the cause hit close to home. Her son Zachary was diagnosed with leukemia four years ago at age 6. After completing three years of chemotherapy in June, Zachary's illness is in remission, and now the fourth-grader has a chance to help other children with cancer. "Zachary came home from school, handed me the letter about the fundraiser, then went up to his room," the Bel Air resident said.

WASHINGTON -- The transformation of American politics by the Internet is accelerating with the approach of the 2006 congressional and 2008 White House elections, producing far-reaching changes in the way campaigns approach advertising, fundraising, mobilizing supporters and even the spreading of negative information. Democrats and Republicans are sharply increasing their use of e-mail, interactive Web sites, candidate and party blogs, and text-messaging to raise money, organize get-out-the-vote efforts and assemble crowds for rallies.