WAWATOSA WONDER SOWS SEEDS OF VOLUNTEERISM NATIONWIDE

Call her the Wawatosa Wonder, a Joanie Appleseed of the arts who travels the land sowing ideas on volunteerism like wild grain to someday sprout into a national bumper crop of arts supporters.

Audrey G. Baird has scattered her infectious enthusiasm among arts groups from Chicago to New York and from Anchorage to Yazoo City, Miss. In eight years as a traveling saleswoman for the arts she has covered all 50 states and Guam.

In July, Baird was called to speak to conferences of public radio managers and regional ballet company artistic directors. Last week she spoke here to representatives of 90 orchestras at the annual conference of the Assn. of California Symphony Orchestras. This week she is at the Blossom Music Festival in Akron, Ohio, where she is talking to a managers’ seminar of the American Symphony Orchestra League.

A former music teacher, Baird began her volunteer work 30 years ago in the Milwaukee suburb of Wawatosa with the PTA and a medical auxiliary. The American Symphony Orchestra League has named an award for Baird, 51, which is given each year to the symphony volunteer organization with the most successful ticket sales program.

“She’s the Danny Newman of volunteerism,” said Joe Kobryner, director of marketing and operations for the Old Globe Theatre, in reference to the Chicago-based subscription guru. Kobryner attended both of Baird’s sessions at the symphony conference, and the Globe paid for four key volunteers and another staff member to attend as well. “She has such a wealth of experience,” Kobryner said. “I hope we can bring her out for an all-day session for the Globe.”

What Baird says is no more important than how she says it. She brings a wallop of enthusiasm to volunteer fund-raising groups. “I try to make it fun. I try to stimulate the group I’m speaking to--to stimulate their thought processes. (Fund-raising) is not a brown paper envelope and 10 prospect cards,” she told a packed room at a conference session. Holding her arms up and snapping her fingers like Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” Baird exhorted her disciples: “Put a little action in it, a little flair.”

Flair and enrolling as many members as possible are the twin messages Baird brings to auxiliaries and support groups. At the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, where Baird is part-time director of audience development, innovation is the name of the fund-raising and ticket-selling game.

The Milwaukee orchestra has held a fancy subscriptions sales kickoff event in a North American Van Lines warehouse for a season marketed as “The Milwaukee Symphony on the Move.” The site for another event with the theme “Subscribe Now for a Flavorful Season” was a chocolate factory.

Such ideas found a ready audience at a special tea for 30 San Diego Symphony Auxiliary volunteers at which Baird was a guest speaker. “I had heard about her for a long time,” said Shirley Rubel, president of the Auxiliary Council. “She was wonderful, dynamic. She gets you so enthusiastic that the people could hardly stay in the room. They wanted to get out and work.”

Baird’s talk was to give an emotional boost to the Auxiliary Council’s first season’s ticket sales contest.

She cross-pollinates arts companies around the country with such ideas. As times change, new approaches to volunteerism are called for.

“The volunteer is smarter today,” Baird said. “The volunteer wants to know that they can make a difference. They’re not just interested in coming to hear a lecture and drink a cup of coffee.

“The volunteer is better educated, more aware of what is happening in the world, wants to really become involved, I guess. But they’re not interested in belonging to an organization that doesn’t have goals . . . that isn’t making something happen for their opera or symphony or whatever.”

Inviting every person who comes to a volunteer fund-raiser to become a member is a cardinal rule of volunteerism, Baird says. In a time of longer work days and decreasing leisure time, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra has more than 600 members in its volunteer groups.

The orchestra’s Women’s League contributed $120,000 and sold $70,000 in season tickets toward a 1985 budget of $7.5 million. By comparison, the various San Diego Symphony auxiliary functions raised $136,000 for operating expenses and netted more than $700,000 in the Symphony Hall gala toward a 1985 budget of $8 million.

Volunteer organizations, Baird says, must be in tune with contemporary life styles. Last season the Milwaukee orchestra began a new program called Casual Classics. The first program was “An Evening with Amadeus.” Actor Tom Hulce, who played Mozart in the movie “Amadeus,” was brought in to serve as narrator. The evening sold out.

A second program called Film Classics featured a contest to match the classical music with the film it was used in. The winner, announced at intermission, received $100 in symphony tickets and a movie pass. After the performance, popcorn and hot dogs were served and Buster Keaton movies were shown. “We reached a whole different group of people who were saying, ‘This isn’t so stuffy,’ ” Baird said.

“We’re making it fun for the volunteer to participate, but we’re also creating news. I tell people newspapers don’t print pictures of people drinking a cup of tea. You have got to come up with ideas that create excitement.”

Baird said management and boards rarely understand how to use volunteers. “I love to speak to board directors. Volunteers are convinced the board doesn’t think they’re important.

“(Volunteers) are not used as much as they could be. But many times volunteers feel that we’re here to do the social; don’t ask us to sell tickets. But that’s only because they have no input. I say to managers, ‘Listen to your volunteers. Sit down with them. Have communication.’ ”

Baird began her peripatetic career about eight years ago after the Milwaukee orchestra Women’s League won several awards from the American Symphony Orchestra League. Baird was asked to join its Volunteer Council. Soon she was president of the council and was asked to make presentations.

Invitations began to role in. Now Thursday through Sunday is often spent outside of Wawatosa doing what she enjoys.

“We’re selling a dream,” Baird told a San Diego audience. “We’re talking about making a better community.”

It’s a worthy goal, and as Baird says, “We’re undefeatable when we have a goal.”