Heading into Valentines Week and I’m definitely feeling the love, because the process of getting these 50 shirts sent to 50 congresswomen has been a labor of love and I’m excited to share the update with you.
Per my breakdown from last week here’s how the shirts are being divvied up:
I took some time to call the offices of each of the 50 Congresswomen (yup, every single one). Can I just say that there are some wonderful people working in government? (true story!)
For some, the term “government employee” conjures up images of disgruntled, lackluster employees at the local DMV. But I can say that after spending a couple of days making calls that there wasn’t a single person in the bunch who gave the impression that they weren’t glad to be at their job. I am so happy that I took the time to speak with each office because I learned quite a bit.
No one in Congress can receive a gift that is above $50. Fortunately, my shirt is well under that, but there were definite “cost” hawks in these offices making sure that no lines were crossed.
Of course there were questions as to whether I am affiliated with any lobbyists or corporation. However, once they learned that it’s just little old me on behalf of me, myself and I… and you fine folks, most responded with “hell yeah!” (actually none of them said those words, but I could totally tell that’s what they would have said if they weren’t representing a government official)
You may have caught that I said “most” said yes, because there were a couple who respectfully declined. They appreciated the gesture, but just didn’t feel comfortable accepting a gift, even from a sincere, intrepid designer.
In each case I shared with them that this is about celebrating women in government and in no way would I want someone to feel like they were put in a compromising position, but would respect their decision to take a pass.
Of course just to be safe I did call someone in the Office of Ethics and was told that there is no problem with sending my shirts to the congresswomen (Whew!)
So after all of the calls, here is where we are at:
As you can see a majority are a go, which is so exciting. I’m hoping that this week I will hear back from the remaining 11 Congresswomen who have been respectfully emailed and messaged.
My goal is to send all 50 packages at the same time, but I may decide to batch them if some of the offices take too long to get back.
So progress is being made, but why take my word for it when you can see hours and hours of calls transformed into a delightful video.
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