Current President Alex Mavro (also with us), better known to these RCBS as “His Couthness”, said there are currently around 300 Rotary clubs in Thailand. He was understandably proud to explain that the raison d'etre of RCBS is not to act as deus ex machina cum benefactor, but rather to use funds they raise to become as involved as circumstances allow in providing selective hands-on assistance to the disadvantaged in our community.  Eureka! Now I realized what sets these entertainingly irreverent good hearts apart from the maddening Rotary International crowd. All the other Rotaries too often make their involvement purely as benefactor. But I wondered how RCBS could possibly afford all this irreverently involved philanthropy?

Until six years ago, RCBS had the same funding uncertainties plagued by all charitable organizations. Typically the primary fund-raising event annually is scheduled (for Club fiscal reasons) at the end of each year and which, for RCBS, was normally expected/hoped to bring in THB400,000 to THB600,000. The second-place fund-raising event is the Charitable Golf Tournament, which has been bringing between THB300,000 and THB500,000 for the past 14 years. 

Another past President, David Sims, told me about the “Patpong Mardi Gras” fund-raising event for 1982 to 1984. At that time, RCBS had the vision to raise charitable money by selling Thailand products and food in stalls on Patpong Street before the existing Patpong Night Bazaar was established. 

Not surprisingly, these Rotarians engaged their entertainingly irreverent spin on it. PP David ran the Miss Patpong contest for 1983 & 1984 and he said it was a most interesting experience.

Firstly, it was necessary to make sure that all the contestants were bona fide Patpong girls, because a ringer won it the first year and the bar owners were teed off. This meant that every contestant had to be checked individually - an arduous task for the RCBSers indeed. 

His other recollection is that for some strange reason, every one of the 12 finalists thought that they had won, right through to the finals because of David’s personal intervention. With these kindly irreverent Rotarians in particular it is not too difficult to imagine where they got that idea but the girls were all most grateful. He said the whole thing was a lot of fun and it is a great pity that the existing Patpong evening market stalls have prevented RCBS from doing it again.

Then, for the bulk of the 90’s, there was the RCBS Christmas Fair. The venue for the first few years was at the Shearaton Royal Orchid garden area, and the next few years at the Montien Hotel parking lot (Montien was their Club’s base until they changed to the Pan Pacific Hotel in 1999). The club was always dreaming/striving for the success of the Ploenchit Fair, but never even came close. In fact, the RCBS Christmas Fairs generally boiled down to being a charitable self-support group. Those non-Rotarians who came loved the Fair, had plenty of fun and everyone always enjoyed the RCBS prodigious and pervading irreverent humor, but most of the fairgoers were the Rotarians and their families. Outside sponsors were few and far between. In those years, a Fair would produce THB500,000.

All these fundraising efforts never provided enough to underwrite all the charities in which RCBS wanted to get involved………………  Until 1997, when the Wanit Mekdhansarn or “Eddie”, owner of the incomparable Witch’s Tavern (when he later became RCBS President, known by his Rotarian peers as “His Hairness”) came up with the ingenious idea of having local Bangkok residents put coins down on Silom Road for charity.

It came to be known as Coins on Silom (COS), and what a perfect idea it was. In light of the fact that there is such a powerful tradition for tam-boon (making merit) ingrained in Thai culture, what could be better than raising funds with donations on the streets of Bangkok? Then the Kingdom’s charitable customs could be parlayed by using COS public relations to raise more and larger donations from commercial sponsors. It proved to be the best Thai idea since tom-yum-kung!

The original brainstorming session for COS was rife with creative ideas for PR. They would build a big stage out in front of McDonalds (across from Patpong), and expected to have some of the best entertainers in Thailand perform there. There would be dragon dances along the entire length of Silom Road. They even thought of competing in the Guiness Book of Records for the longest stretch of coins in the world. But, upon investigation, they learned that Guiness already had a record 5 times the length of Silom Road. 

However, the more these altruistic fun-loving executives thought about the event, the more challenging the implementation for the ingenious fund-raising idea became: logistics, manpower, entertainment, advertising, security………. Hey! 

Security……….. how could they possibly have people put coins on a city street, with so many pedestrians walking around, without the coins being scattered or picked up by others?

Subsequent brainstorming sessions were plentiful and mind-racking, but always full of the irreverent banter among themselves. The solutions were innovative and resourceful as only Rotary International’s business experience, ingenuity and connections could provide.

Sticking coins on the street was accomplished with a Rotarian’s friend, 3-M Thailand’s Managing Director, who offered to donate 1,000 meters of sticky plastic red carpet and double-sided sticky tape down the middle. Thus 3-M became the first COS-Gold Sponsor, with a donation of THB50,000.

Manpower challenges were assisted by Father Joe Meier's Mercy and Human Development Center, for which he brought in slum-refugee kids to help out on the day of the event (30 of them this year).

The rest of the challenges were resolved by RCBS members themselves, such as substituting common metal slugs for coins to put on the street and selling the slugs for Baht which is deposited in plastic buckets on the Rotarians’ COS trays. Consequently, COS proved to be the perfect sort of highly-involved participation the membership craves and cherishes. And, best of all, it provided them an open-ended source of good-natured irreverence that insured their continued energy with this project.

Once the first event was finally launched and completed in 1997, it confirmed COS to be the best and biggest fund-raiser RCBS had ever had. That first year brought in THB900,000+ and, true to RCBS form, one of the enthusiastic (and financially comfortable) members donated the balance to round things up to an even THB1 million.

Each subsequent year surpassed the previous one: more and better PR, more Gold Sponsors and more charitable funds available to RCBS. Accordingly, this year has proved to be the best to date – THB1.42 million, before all the figures are in and some of the traditional red donation-piggy-banks are still out there.  Gold Sponsors grew from 3 in 1997 to 14 this year including; Oriental Hotel, American Express, BMW, Barter Card, Task Furniture, Dusit Thani Hotel, T.E.I., Brinks, Hotel Plaza Athenee, Castrol, Seimens, Chester’s Grill, C.P.Group and O'Reilly's Thairish  Pub.

Most special about this year was that, although Sponsorship is important, the people in the street were donating more than ever as well.  Some of the least likely people in Bangkok were contributing and donating what they could to COS. One Rotarian was working with his coins tray around his neck in front of McDonalds, when a beggar came up in his wheelchair: he first thought he was going to be asked for money, but was pleasantly surprised when the beggar put 8 baht in his tray. Another Rotarian took a Soi-boy motorcycle taxi to beat the traffic up to Dusit Thani COS headquarters: when he got off the bike, the driver would not accept the payment.  Yet another was standing with his tray accepting donations and handing out COS slugs when a lady selling fruit put 20 Baht in the COS tray as she left with her cart.

As the President, His Couthness, brought to light in his COS Redux email to all RCBS members, “Everywhere I went, Rotarians told me that people were donating more than ever (in the end, ten percent more.)  Everywhere I went, I saw enthusiastic Rotarians, volunteers, and slum children working as one toward a collective goal, one that will allow Bangkok South to follow through with our community service programs, as budgeted.”

In the end, the most significant recognition of success is imitation or emulation. In the past 2 years, RCBS has seen at least one more Thai Rotary start their own version of Coins on Silom and other Rotary International member-countries are talking about it as well.

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