WESTFIELD – In an effort to raise additional funding for the Westfield Athenaeum, a strange flock of plastic pink flamingos has descended upon the front yards of city businesses and residents alike since June.
“We’ve been doing this flocking all summer,” said Westfield Athenaeum Volunteer Jayne Mulligan of the ‘Follow the Flock’ campaign. “We’ve been flocking people all over town, either anonymously or for birthdays or anniversaries, with all the funds going to the library.”
On Saturday, October 4, the Westfield Athenaeum will be bidding the birds farewell for the fall and winter with a sendoff at Papp’s Bar and Grill on 110 Airport Road from 3-6 p.m.
The gathering is intended to celebrate the success of the birds in raising funds for the library this summer.
“It started in the middle of June, just in chit-chat between myself and Cher Collins, the director of the Athenaeum,” said Mulligan. “It started off as silliness, but it’s gotten an awful lot of attention.”
In a summer that saw the vaunted Ice Bucket Challenge become a national phenomenon, raising millions of dollars for research of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), the flocking initiative functioned in a similar manner.
“The initial intent was that we would put it on someone’s yard and they would have to pay $10 a day to move the flamingos off their lawn,” Mulligan stated. “But people then got ahold of us to do it for graduations and things with ‘congratulations’ around their necks. We had them at (State Senator Don) Humason’s house with flags on them.”
“We’ve actually raised about $800. For something that started really small with just a goal of getting the word out, it’s really come a long way,” said Collins, adding that the Athenaeum’s original fundraising goal was only $100. “We’ve probably flocked between 60 and 65 people during the summer. We marched in the Memorial Day Parade with them just to generate that buzz, and then we kicked it off in June.”
Much in the way of the Ice Bucket Challenge, the flocking has taken off via social media.
“It’s hit all age groups,” said Mulligan, who posts pictures of each ‘flocking’ to her Facebook page. “A couple who live in the city, their daughter lives in upstate New York. She saw it on my Facebook and called to ask me to flock her parents for the weekend. Its hit all demographics.”
The campaign has been carried out by volunteers, who sneak up to the properties of designated individuals or businesses and stick the plastic flamingos all over their lawns, thus tagging them to donate to the library.
“Initially it was done more as a ‘fun-raiser’ than fundraiser,” said Mulligan. “It has done the trick, though. People see the birds – they think ‘library fundraiser.'”
Collins said that the hope is that the flocking campaign can be a precursor of sorts to a larger capital campaign for the library, similar to efforts put on by Noble Hospital and the Amelia Park Children’s Museum.
“Before we even get in the league of the Noble Ball or the Penguin Plunge, we have to raise awareness,” she said. “Everybody is well aware of what the hospital and museum do but we have to clarify what our role is in this community and this is absolutely a baby step toward doing that.”
“We are city – and state-funded, but we have to bridge some of the funding gap with donations, gifts, grants and all of that because we’re a non-profit,” said Collins.
She stated that the Athenaeum’s operating budget is roughly $1.2 million, with around 60 percent of that coming from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the city of Westfield.
“For the traditional services, folks are still coming in and getting their favorite books and DVDs and are still able to check this out. It’s still totally free and open to the public,” said Collins, who credits the Athenaeum’s “strength in programming” with it’s continued patronage. “We have a lunchtime concert series, a speaker series, traditional storytimes and book discussions for kids.”
“We’ve got a tremendous summer reading program that broke a brand-new record this year – we had 1,000 participants – and I just don’t think people see that,” she continued before summarizing the farewell event next month. “It is an opportunity to support a worthy cause – your library – and continue to follow the flock, send them south for the winter and we’ll have a kickoff event in the spring when the ground thaws.”
Tickets to the October 4 event are currently being sold at the Athenaeum for $25 per person or $45 for couples. Drinks as well as hot and cold hors d’oeuvres will be served, with raffles and other prize contests set to be held, as well.
