By 1990, even though Trees for Life was gaining some traction, we were still very fragile. We were staffed by several volunteers and a few paid staff who were behind in collecting their minimum salaries but continued to work by exhausting their personal savings. In the middle of it all, an opportunity appeared that propelled us further toward our mission.
It was part of our fundamental belief that, to solve the problems of the world, all segments of society must be involved. Otherwise, we would be singing to the choir. Our effort was to find common ground between various ideas, groups, and people. We were for something, not against anything. We tried to involve as many segments of society as possible.
One such effort was to create environmental awareness among young children. For this, we designed a tree-planting kit. It contained seeds, instructions on how to plant them, and information on how children could help other children in developing countries to fight malnutrition by planting a fruit tree. The kit included a pint-sized empty milk carton for children to use as the container to start a tree sapling from seed.
We offered this kit to elementary school teachers in conjunction with Earth Day. A one- column-inch announcement was published in a one-time pamphlet that highlighted planned Earth Day activities nationwide. We expected a few dozen orders, at best. It was something to be ignored on our back burner. I left to help plant trees in India for six weeks.
Upon my return, I was shocked to learn we had received more than 60,000 orders! More orders were arriving daily, until the number of kit orders reached almost 100,000.
We did not have the staff, funds, or the capabilities to handle such a flood. This item was no longer on the backburner. It was now boiling over, needing immediate attention.
A retired businessman who was volunteering his services as the Trees for Life business manager saw no problem at all. “Just ignore all those orders as if they weren’t received. Throw them in the trash can. No one will know,” he advised.
The rest of us disagreed.
After an intense discussion we concluded that if we broke this trust with others, then it would have also broken us. We would not have been able to trust ourselves. Crises such as these are what allowed us to grow.
“Bunk. Fuzzy thinking,” our friend maintained.
There were still six months left before Earth Day, and we made a commitment to somehow meet the challenge. We did not know how.
The cost of the milk carton was the biggest item on the budget, which totaled $66,500. We decided to tackle that first. Our local milk producer introduced us to their supplier, a major manufacturer of paper cartons, and soon I was on a flight to their headquarters. My objective was to get a donation of those cartons, and their objective was to sell us the cartons. It turned out to be a hard-bargaining session that was not going anywhere. I asked to see the boss.
“He’s out of town,” the man told me. He opened the door and started walking me out of the building. We passed his boss’s office. The door was barely cracked open. I could see the boss talking to someone. He saw me.
“Hey, hey, hold on!” he said, and waved us in.
“How did your meeting go?” he asked the person who was seeing me out. After a short conversation, he said, “Let’s make a deal.” He assured me we could count on them to donate the cartons.
After that, the company’s public relations vice president asked me to meet him in New York. I took the next flight. He said the donation was worth a large amount, and we would have to do several things, including letting them manage our public relations. They wanted Trees for Life to make fundamental changes in our message to suit their needs.
“Work with us and you will have no money problems,” he said. It was obvious they were trying to buy me.
Back home, I wrote a polite letter informing him that we would need to do things our own way.
Soon after, a new person in the company was named to be our point person.
“I am taking charge of this thing to help you,” he said. He asked me to give him a final “date of no return” when the cartons had to be shipped.
On that date, he called to tell me the company would not give us the cartons. Using abusive language, he said, “You are doing this to yourself.” He had hoped I would give in to their demands. But I was not about to.
I hung up. The paper company had played dirty with us. But I did not have the luxury of sweating over that. I had to act NOW. For us, the 100,000 orders for tree kits were not ordinary requests. They were commitments from little children to plant a tree. That was sacred. For us, it would have been criminal to let these children down.
Immediately, I contacted another major carton supplier by phone and got through to their general manager. He told me that to get a donation, I would have to go through their committee and it could take months, with no certainty. The bottom line: we were going to have to pay for the cartons. For them to even initiate the action, we had to send them $20,000 up front. That was done within the hour, cleaning out every penny in the till.
“There will be no paychecks next month,” our volunteer business manager warned. “Let it be known that I am signing this check under protest.”
Treva was displeased, to say the least. Her voice betrayed the fear caused by a good many missed paychecks over an extended period.
The business manager was as much displeased with my apparent nonchalance as he was with the act of parting with our last penny. “You are a mad man. You are all a bunch of crazy people here,” he said.
I was the only person in the office that afternoon when the phone rang. It was a woman’s voice on the other end of the line.
“Our family met yesterday to discuss our charity budget and we are sending you a check,” she said.
“May I ask you how much?” I put all my courage in my throat.
“Twenty thousand dollars,” she answered, acting surprised, as if I should have known.
Treva wiped tears from her eyes when she heard the news.
“It’s a miracle. It’s a miracle,” our business manager kept repeating, loudly for anyone to hear, as if he were dancing a jig.
I was experiencing, yet again, that someone, somewhere, somehow was telling me, “Don’t worry. You are being taken care of.”
That evening I went for a long walk. One cannot describe the energy, the high, caused by the mystery of the Spirit, but one can experience it. I pledged to thank the Spirit 20,000 times, by count, starting that moment.
When some of our supporters heard what the first carton supplier had done, they worked to help us to raise the rest of the money. The mayor of Wichita called on others to donate. Another friend sent us $3,000.
But it was the advice of a public relations executive with a national restaurant chain that tipped the scales. I had never met this man before he came to my office. I had just written a letter to a donor, who had given us $1,000 in the past, explaining our predicament. In that letter I suggested, “If you are inclined to donate, this may be the time.” The letter was on my desk ready to mail. The public relations person picked up the letter as he passed my desk and started to read it. Then he took out his expensive fountain pen from his jacket, crossed out the word ‘may’ and substituted ‘is’. The revised letter read: “If you are inclined to donate, this is the time.” The donor responded with a gift of $40,000, making up most of the difference of what was needed.
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