<<COMMERCIAL>> Marshall Atkinson So, when it comes down to it, a social cause is all about people. So how have you gotten people to help you with what you’d been doing over the years? Rick Roth Well, I think I mentioned it earlier. I kind of have that three-part thing. It’s if you’re asking people to do what they do well already, don’t ask the doctor to fold shirts for you. If you ask — don’t ask an artist that, you know, the artist is going to do the design… and if you can demonstrate right from the start that you’re well-organized, the biggest part of that is that you’re not asking it at the last minute. And then they think it’s going to make a difference. So if you can boil down what the cause is to a short, you know, I’m not a novelist, so a short paragraph, and you can maybe give some specifics about how it helps. I think you know, I’ve had a wide range of people willing to help and. It’s worked really well, I have to say. I guess that last part or the part about being organized is, you know, you want a good job; you want it to be at a reasonable price or, you know, in this case, donated and you want it in a hurry. Usually, I only get two of those. You know what I mean? You’re going to get a good person to do it in a hurry. You better pay them a lot. And if you want it in a hurry and you want it cheap, you’re going to get a crappy job, probably. So it’s, you know, you got to pick two out of three of us. Marshall Atkinson How have you recruited companies to help you? Like a t-shirt company helped donate the shirts or eight companies. And I remember when we were talking about organizing for this podcast, we’re discussing that shirt that you did for the SGIA show in New Orleans that went to the, jazz musician retirement home or whatever that was for, I mean, how did you like get all that stuff lined up? What’s your strategy there? Rick Roth Well, you know, it’s a little bit of t-shirt alchemy, maybe. You know, you can turn emulsion into making a musician’s life better. And you can convince people that that’s going to happen. And, you know, it kind of goes back to what you do well, alright. Well, the emulsion company isn’t going to give you a t-shirt, but they can give you an emulsion, and I can use that, and it can pay for some, some aspects of things that I’m going to outlay cash for. And, you know, what else? We always have fun. You know, the party is fun and there’s a t- shirt that goes along with it. You know, everybody wins and you know, we’ve done a lot of those and they’ve been really successful. The industry has a lot of great people in it and you know, some of them aren’t that sophisticated or don’t want to know. But, you know, over the years, people trust me that the cause is good, so they don’t have to look into it in great depth. And I think that’s been a key element and usually it’s well- organized and I showed them the difference. And, you know, we’ve raised sizable amounts of money. In one of the New Orleans shows, we raised $45,000 for the New Orleans Musicians Clinic. And that was over 15 years ago. So in today’s dollars, it might’ve been about $75,000 and different people came together to work on it. Hanes, you know, gave t-shirts, all the different suppliers kicked in, you know, ink, and emulsion, and all the different aspects of screens, you know; Don Newman gave the screens for printing it, you know, and all that added up.
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