CS Monitor booth at Bothell business fair: Fruitage Report
By Nancy Sanders
This report is about our Christian Science Monitor booth on Saturday, August 26, 2023 from 1 pm to 5 pm at the Summerfest Small Business fair at Bothell Landing Park, sponsored by First Church of Christ, Scientist, Bothell, Washington. The fair was for small businesses, both profit and non-profit.
The event was free to the vendors and sponsored by several agencies including Bothell Kenmore Chamber of Commerce and the Port of Seattle. Our booth was between a school tutoring business and a memory care facility in Bothell. The sponsors provided a six-foot-long table, an overhead canopy providing lots of shade, and folding chairs. On the table we had:
Piles of new Monitors from the most recent weeks
Monitor subscription cards
A notebook to sign up new Monitor subscribers
Two information sheets about the Monitor and its most recent awards on plastic holders
A six-foot-long “Christian Science Monitor” banner attached to the canopy with zip ties
Yellow flowers to match the Monitor advertising banner
Next time (let us know about upcoming fairs) it will be nice to have water, ice and paper cups. We will be ordering a stretch table cloth that will have the Monitor name on it. The stretch cloth will prevent the cloth from lifting up in the wind. We also need to determine how to keep the paper Monitors from being lifted up by the wind. On the 26 th we used rocks!
Church members serving at the booth for an hour or two at a time included;
A Sunday school teacher with her five-year-old daughter (who was adept at taking Monitors to other booths in trade for what they were giving away). Two Journal listed Practitioners, one with a crowd-pleaser friendly dog Hamish, First and Second readers, Two Sunday school teachers, a retired Christian Science Nurse, and Literature Distribution volunteer from a neighboring Christian Science Church.
Our booth was successful! We gave away about 20 print Monitors and signed up 7 people to receive either the print or digital Monitor versions or both. A few more visitors said they were busy but would visit our Reading Room to make a subscription request. They seemed to know where our church/Reading Room is located.
Visitor comments included:
A 30 something said “My history teacher loved the Monitor and said it was a great source for news.” He signed up for a subscription.
Another man was excited to see our booth and said “Yes, I know the Monitor and I used to read it but lost track of how to find it”. He wants the digital version.
A naturopathic doctor with an office near our church said she feels “good vibes” from our church. She took the issue about plastic pollution because her husband is very concerned about that subject and talks to people when he sees them drop plastic.
A lady who has volunteered for years for the local school district is running for the school board and was interested in the Monitor as an honest paper. She told us why she was running for the school board and said she would come into the Reading Room to sign up when she had more time.
When I was purchasing a plant for the Monitor table at the grocery store, the man in front of me asked at what booth was I working. He said he knew about the Monitor because his grandmother had been a Christian Scientist and he used the Monitor for his school reports. He was reminded the paper is still there.
A lady saw the Monitor issue with a rare bird on the cover. The bird was thought to be extinct but may have been found in Florida. She loves birds and was very happy to know the bird may still be there and to have that issue.
A (middle-aged) man and woman came by to look at our booth, The woman said she began following the Monitor reporting when the Iran revolution was going on in the 1970s and 1980s. (Some of you might recall the taking over of’ the American embassy at one point.) She said she found the Monitor to be fair in its reporting and quite unbiased on the whole. Her husband was Iranian and the two of them signed up for a full subscription. They also took a couple of Monitor Weekly complimentary copies.
What were our Monitor talking points?
7 Pulitzers + recent awards for Headlines and Congressional reporting
Published to combat yellow journalism / fake news
Non-religious paper
Family friendly
On pollster’s scale, less right or left bias than other papers in the poll such as NY Times
Good for kids’ school work
No obligation to continue after subscription ends
How did this experience compare with last year?
In August 2022 at the Bothell small business fair, we also had a booth. Last year the fair was 3 hours rather than 4, and our booth was in a less traveled section of the fair. We gave away 5 or 6 Monitors and 2 gift subscriptions.
So this year we had more visitors, more engagement, and gave out significantly more Monitors and gift subscriptions.
A big thank-you to Cindy Safronoff, administrator of the Christian Science Joint Literature Distribution office for supplying the Monitors for our booth!