As happy as I am to be training for this triathlon and to receive the excellent coaching and support from Team in Training there is a catch. The catch is that I need to raise over $3,800 for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. It’s not such a bad catch as it is definitely a worthy charity.
The trouble that I have is fundraising. It SUCKS to ask your friends and family for money. I have raised money for the LLS in the past. I sent letters to all of my friends and family. I figured that I’d send one to everyone on my Christmas list. If I like someone enough to send them a Christmas card, hopefully they like me enough to donate. The response was touching and overwhelming. I was expecting $10 and $15 donations. What I received was $100 and $200 donations. I had a much smaller goal at the time and I far exceeded it. Now after such generosity how do I ask people to donate again?
This year, as soon as I committed to this triathlon, I posted my plans on facebook and sent out an email blast. I received a very favorable response as I do know so many kind and generous people. My mother even asked for donations to my cause in lieu of gifts for her 70th birthday. I still have reached only 52% of my goal.
So in comes fundraising events. I contacted every mall, bookstore and toy store that I could think of to offer to wrap presents during the holiday season. The gift wrapping is free, but customers can choose to make a donation as thank you. Barnes and Noble was the only one that had any availability. So I got off of work early one night and met a team mate at the store ready, willing and able to earn tons of money for our cause. We set up, bought some tea at the café, and sat there…and sat there…wrapped a couple of gifts…got more tea…and sat there. In five hours the two of us made a grand total of $9 to split between our fundraising efforts. We spent more on the tea. To make matters worse we were obligated to wrap gifts two more times. Luckily they cancelled on us one of the times. We made about $35 the other time.
I planned a B-I-N-G-O party with some other team mates, but they cancelled on me.
I started a Super Bowl Pool a month ago. I brought the boxes around to absolutely everybody I know. So far I have only 25 boxes full. Apparently I don’t know too many people.
I had cool triathlon t-shirts made up. I have sold four so far.
On Saturday my mentor offered me a Kindle Fire to raffle off. Hopefully that will be more successful.
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