Campaign Leadership Awards Ceremony Speech

This speech is intended to be given during a CFC Finale or Awards Ceremony as brief remarks to thank CFC campaign team members and participants.

Ladies & Gentlemen,

It’s an honor for me to address you for a moment at this awards ceremony. First, I’d like to take a minute to thank [Campaign Manager] and [his/her] amazing team of Keyworkers and volunteers. [Name campaign team members and their roles.] Thanks to them, and to all of you, our [agency or region] was able to Show Some Love by raising more than [$Dollar Amount], with [Number] participants and an average gift of [$Dollar Amount.] That is truly commendable. Please join me in a round of applause for your campaign team—for your dedication and your amazing accomplishments.

How much money does it take to save a life? (Pause.) It’s kind of a tough question, isn’t it? The moment we start to think about the value of life and equate it in terms of dollars, something in our human spirit starts to revolt at the very notion. Nevertheless, I think it’s a question worth pondering.

Depending upon your personal designations, here are a few examples of what CFC contributions can do in the coming year:

·  For one dollar, our local food bank will provide $7 worth of groceries—that’s a meal or two—for a hungry person. You and I on our own can’t go into the grocery store and bargain to get $8 dollars’ worth of food for just one dollar. But thanks to the buying power and connections of the food bank, they will really can stretch a dollar that far. For someone who’s truly starving, that meal can save a life.

·  For one dollar, a well-known human services organization will vaccinate a child in a third-world country against life-threatening diseases that have long since been eradicated in the United States. If that vaccine prevents the child from dying, then your $1 donation will be saving a life.

·  For one dollar, your favorite charity will plant a tree. Trees provide oxygen, and they’re a vital part of our ecosystem. If it’s a fruit tree, it also will provide nutrients and sustenance for many individuals. So for a dollar, your tree might save one life or many.

In the final analysis, we can probably never know how many lives we saved with our contributions of time and money. You will never miss what people in need will never forget. When all’s said and done, I’m with you when it comes to the value of life. You truly can’t put a dollar value on it. But you can translate a dollar gift, or an hour of volunteer service, into something that does save lives, because those dollars and those hours represent something far greater. They represent the care and compassion humans are capable of feeling for one another. So, truly, it’s not what the dollar is, it’s what the dollar means.

To the person who receives the hot meal, the warm bed, the vaccination, the medicine, the roof overhead—the dollar means that someone out there—YOU—cared enough about them to make a small sacrifice so that their life could be better. And that knowledge, that feeling that someone else cares … I believe that is what saves lives in the end.

Sometimes, we can feel overwhelmed by how much need is out there. We see the statistics about homelessness, poverty, or disease on the news, and we might think to ourselves, “I’m just one person. There’s no way I can make any difference.” But that is a false idea. Remember the story of the little boy walking along the beach after a storm, throwing the stranded starfish back into the ocean. A passerby saw what he was doing and asked the boy why he was wasting his time. “There are thousands and thousands of starfish on this beach!” came the protest. “You can’t possibly make a difference.” In response, boy bent down, picked up one more starfish and threw it into the ocean. Then, turning back to the passerby, he said simply: “It made a difference to that one.” The philosopher Sydney Smith said,” It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little - do what you can.”

I truly believe that together, we’ve saved many lives through this campaign. We’ll probably never to get to meet those people, but they exist, and because you decided to Show Some Love, their lives will be richer and better.

Thank you very much.