After a brief orientation, Deutsch and dozens of other volunteers hit the phones in a large room at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. Tables festooned with balloons and bowls of Jelly Bellys gave the room a celebratory feel.
The patter of the rainfall outside blended with the buzz of voices inside as callers hit up thousands of Bay Area Jews for donations to aid multiple Jewish programs and organizations here, in Israel and elsewhere abroad. By day’s end, volunteers had made about 10,000 calls and raised $1.7 million.
Even San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown got in on the action. He showed up mid-morning and hailed the “mighty, mighty role” of private organizations in filling gaps in city funding.
He even picked up a phone and called a donor himself. No one answered; “Da Mayor” left a message.
Callers simultaneously worked the phones at the Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center in Palo Alto, where a power outage forced volunteers to call in the dark, using flashlights, for more than an hour. By evening, some 700 callers at the two sites had taken a significant bite out of the federation’s campaign goal of $20.9 million.
“We were so pleased,” said Cindy Rogoway, associate campaign director. “It was beyond our expectations really.”
Rogoway said the majority of previous donors either increased their gifts or gave the same amount as last year. “We had very few decreases in giving.”
This year, the JCF stressed the push to attract first-time donors. Volunteers netting high numbers of first-timers got prizes — bottles of wine, for example — and were bedecked with colorful Hawaiian leis.
Some people, of course, answered the fund-raising plea with a flat “no.” But volunteers know that’s to be expected. When she got nixed by a caller, 14-year-old volunteer Rachel Shiner took it in stride, simply moving on to the next call.
Despite her age, the pony-tailed teen from Mill Valley seemed entirely at ease calling people at least twice her age to ask for donations. “I like doing the calling a lot,” she said. “If they’re serious and you get them to lighten up, it’s the best thing.”
Shiner, whose father, Dan, works at the JCF, has been a Super Sunday solicitor for several years. Many of Sunday’s volunteers, in fact, are regulars at the annual event.
Burlingame resident Kurt Stern, 79, has been involved with JCF fund-raising so long he remembers knocking on doors to solicit donations. That was 20 years ago — before Super Sunday became a well-oiled machine complete with 1,000 volunteers and organizers armed with walkie-talkies.
Stern, a German refugee, volunteers out of a sense of appreciation for the comfortable life he forged in America.
“I have the feeling I have to do whatever I can to do something for the Jewish people,” he said, phone in hand.
Across the room, Sarah Azarnova joined several other Russian speakers to dial emigres from the former Soviet Union.
“Usually they’re very benevolent. They’re very willing to help,” said Azarnova, who immigrated to this country 10 years ago. “Sometimes, they’ve had harsh circumstances and can’t give much, but every penny counts.”