Alright, so I stole the title of this post from a book. But the book turned out to be plagiarized anyway, so what does it matter? The statement perfectly sums up how my heart feels very frequently in this fundraising process.
I have a hard time asking people to donate. It took a lot of nerve and self-encouraging to send out an e-mail to all my family members. I wrote the message, hit send and my excitement surged. Some donations came in (for which I am immensely grateful), but when I didn’t get an immediate outpouring of response from everyone, my heart started to break.
But I patched it back together and took a couple more weeks before sending out a message to a bunch of friends. And the response was even more dismal. Several people just ignored the message entirely, no words of encouragement or even an acknowledgment of receipt. And my heart broke a little more.
I selected a small group of co-workers that I thought I had a pretty good connection with to send out a message to, I wasn’t about to spam my entire workplace and risk alienating those I didn’t know very well. I got one donation from that.
After some deep breathing into a paper bag, I decided to start my $1 campaign. I sent out messages to different bloggers all around and several people responded. My message was posted on other’s sites and people started to donate. And while the response wasn’t as huge as I had initially hoped, it was very exciting to receive donations of any amount from strangers around the web who have kind hearts. My heart started to stitch itself back together, but it’s still fragile.
I know I can’t just keep asking people to give money. I need to do something to EARN the donations. All of the suggestions on fundraising I’ve received seem to center around an office environment or a spouse’s workplace. As a telecommuter I don’t have an office I go into each day to get co-workers to contribute. I’ve e-mailed people, but that hasn’t turned up much and when they don’t see my smiling face each day, I fear they tend to forget about me! (Unless there is a problem, then I’m remembered.) My husband is too shy to approach his co-workers for donations on my behalf, so I’m on my own in this regard.
I don’t drink, I can’t really rent out a bar and have some kind of fundraising at a bar night. I’m not crafty, I can’t make cute things to raffle. I don’t know a lot of people who own their own businesses so I don’t know how to approach people for corporate sponsorship.
I can make websites and if people want a simple, informational web site for their small business, I would consider doing that for them if they donated a good chunk of change to my training. I can’t give up hours of my life for a $20 donation though. It would need to be a significant amount.
As recommitment to Team In Training approaches in September, I’m getting a little scared. I will have to give the LLS my credit card at that point. Even though they won’t charge it until the marathon time arrives (if I’ve missed my mark), I’d still like to be doing better. I’ve brought in a pretty good amount, more money than I’ve ever brought in through any kind of fundraising. But it’s still far off the mark.
So if anyone has fundraising ideas for me, please feel free to share them.
Tuesday Night Run:
It was very cloudy all afternoon, thunder and lightning… but alas, we didn’t get any rain. Just humidity. And while the temperatures cooled down a little by our normal standards, it was still 99° out. We ran 3.6 miles in 35 minutes though, so that means we had a sub-10:00 pace going. So even if I was soggy and gross at the end, I felt awesome.
Hundred Push-up Challenge:
Week 5, Day 2: 15, 15, 14, 14, 12, 12, 10, 24 = 116
I failed again… I was supposed to get 30 in that last set. Oh well, I’ll just do Day 3 this week and then repeat it AGAIN. I can definitely tell I’m getting stronger, who cares if it takes me longer to get to the magical number of 100.
Jill Will Run 
I wish I could help with ideas, Jill. To be honest, I suck at stuff like that. I was really hoping your Give $1 Campaign would take off.
Good job on keeping up with the push-ups. My commitment sucks. I figure I need to start over…
Hang in there . . .I realized last year too what a commitment it was to fundraise. Here’s a couple of things that worked for me:
– I sent out an email the first of each month to the same group of people, giving them a brief update on my training and publicly thanking people who donated. I found a lot of people were in the “oh yeah, I still want to do that stage” but never quite got around to it so the monthly emails helped. Every email I sent would bring in more donations. I didn’t add people to the list, it just helped as a reminder. Plus, good or bad, I think the publicly thanking people was a bit of peer pressure. Whatever. It was a good cause. It worked.
– Do you have any of the Dinner by Design-type places near you? The one by us (it’s a different chain) let us host a private session there to assemble meals (as they often do) but this time a percentage of all of our friends’ fees went to the charity. They also put a note up on their local site, so anytime jane doe signed up, she could designate a portion of her fee to the charity. It was a fun time, friends got dinners out of it, and they didn’t have to pay anything “extra” toward the charity.
– I never did this last year, but may this year . .. we live in a subdivision and while I don’t know all of our neighbors, I was going to drop a letter in mailboxes letting them know that I was running for charity, that they could visit the web site or drop a check off in my mailbox made out to the charity.
Hope that helps! (also hope you got our donation the other week!)
My dad has done TNT fund raising, and the only thing I can tell you is to make sure you are asking everyone. He asked all his friends, my mom’s co-workers, his siblings’ friends, my friends, etc. Even if people donated a small amount, every little bit helps. Good luck!
I feel your pain. Fear of fundraising is the only reason I’ve never joined a TNT program 😦
Have you considered sending paper letters? I know it’s kinda the same as an email, but a distant friend recently sent out a mass paper mailing and got a huge response. Something about getting it in the mail made it harder to ignore. It certainly made US donate 😀
I feel your pain too. Our re-commitment is tomorrow and I’m am pretty anxious about it. I’m going to do it, but oh how it scares me that I will have to pay the remaining balance at the end. Definitely send out paper letters. That has helped me. Also I did a garage sale last year that really helped. People will give unwanted goods if they can’t afford to donate money.
Sending a follow-up email with an update on my training brought in about $500 more! Just like that!
A couple months out, I sent a general-sounding email to specific people who hadn’t donated, but who I knew could/would. (I didn’t want to single anyone out. Hi John. I noticed you haven’t donated. Please do so. Now.)
The email was something like, “Hi everyone! Here is an update on my training. This is how much I’ve raised. I have X amount to go. Those of you that would still like to help, there is the link!”
Some people simply need a reminder. And some just want to be sure that you’re “serious.” Not so much in your case, since you already completed a marathon… but for someone like me? Yeah, I’m sure a few people were like, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Hey Jill,
Can’t think of a time the words shy and Kevin have been used in the same sentence 🙂 I think of a particular talent show and do-nuts. Retiscent, maybe. I wish I had just a tiny bit of your enthusiasm for running for my walking. I can’t think of any time I have come home from a walk and thought ” I am sure glad I did that!”
Take it easy.
MamaStub
It’s really, really comforting to see I’m not the only one having bad days on the 100 pushup challenge! I attempted week 3 day 1 today – but could only do 1.5 sets. ARG! But I’ll try again in a couple days, and maybe to the level 1 sets instead of the level 2.
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