Fundraising With Flowers
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree
I don’t know about you, but these days, when my mailbox bulges with solicitations from just about every non-profit organization known to man, I can’t help but wonder whether there might be another way to go about it.
The history of fundraising, after all, is the history of innovation. Think pink — pink ribbons, that is; or pledge cards with their turn-down flaps, each flap designating a specific dollar amount. And how about the Christmas and Easter seal, silent auctions, Las Vegas night?
The repertoire of fundraising devices is a capacious and imaginative one. Heading the list, at least for me, is Flower Day, a little known JNF initiative of the interwar years. Most of us associate JNF with the little blue tin collection box and the purchase and planting of trees, but flowers were also pressed into service.
“Buy a flower to make the Negev bloom,” importuning children exhorted passersby on the urban street. (Remember the scene in Woody Allen’s “Radio Days?”) For a donation of 10 cents, one would receive a flower to be pinned on a lapel, much like a boutonniere. In other iterations of Flower Day, youngsters sold packets of flower seeds to friends and family in the hope that they, just like the Jewish state, would eventually blossom.
“Zionists are progressive and democratic in their propaganda,” observed one eyewitness early in the 20th century, trotting out Flower Day as a case in point. Progressive and democratic they may have been, but floral-minded Zionists also took their cue from the growing practice within middle class circles of decorating one’s home with carnations, gladiolas, roses and tulips.
Framing the Zionist project in terms likely to appeal to an upwardly mobile audience, Flower Day both feminized and modernized the raising of funds with which to build a Jewish homeland.
Roses, anyone?
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30