Tracy and Therese are longtime riders and top fundraisers for team Sweet Rides in Atlanta. Over the next four weeks, they will share hands on fundraising advice that has worked for their team. Today they talk about their team’s fundraising philosophy and how they make it fun.
Fundraise off the Beaten Path
Hi, I am Tracy and I am a fundraising junkie.
Hi, I am Therese and I am a fundraising junkie too.
Both of Therese and I have been involved with 24 Foundation since the first year in Atlanta. We have done a little bit of everything at the event, but during the year we are fundraising junkies. We have millions of ideas, we execute what we can, and most importantly we try to have a lot of fun and raise awareness and money! Both of us have had very close friends and family affected by cancer and we have found a way to give back and celebrate with 24 Foundation and our team Sweet Rides. Little did we know we would love fundraising so much!
So how do you find what works for you?
Things to look at when you’re deciding how to fundraise.
1. What do you enjoy doing?
2. How much time you have?
3. What are your fundraising goals?
If you want to have even more fun, invite people to join you. They could be a teammate, someone from another team, even someone not riding that wants to help out.
What Do You Enjoy Doing?
We think this is so important. We know mostly families so many of our events are family related. If you spend more time at work, then find a way to involve the people you work with. If you participate in a sport or other activity, come up with something to involve that. There are so many ideas, small and large, and sometimes you have to just decide to go for it! The first tool you should always us is the 24 Foundation personal page, emails, personal letters and share on social media sites.
Here are some other ideas we brainstormed:
- Bake Sale at Work or School (if you have kids in your front yard or at a yard sale)
- Dinner Night with Raffle at Local Restaurant
- Yard Sale (your family or make it big and include others)
- Raffles (online or at events)
- Donation that will honor someone – Tshirts, banners, bikes, jerseys
- Bar or Pub Crawl
- Bike Ride or other sporting event
- Poker Tournament
- Car Wash
- Chili Cook Off
- Corporate Donations or Sponsorships
- Partner with a local business and see what ideas they have
- Offering home cooked meals or doing odd jobs to friends and family that donate
- Offer babysitting to families with kids for donations
If you think about what you enjoy, you can work fundraising around it and if you have fun, people will want to join in and donate money to this awesome cause!
How Much Time Do You Have?
When is the Event? How much time can you invest? When we plan our events this is a big question. Your return for the investment of the event is the amount of money you raise and the connections you make. You have to look at the time you put in and what the donations may be. You can find ways to cut down on the time and increase the donations, but sometimes you have to be creative. If you want to plan a larger event, there is no reason not to start working on next year right now.
What are your Fundraising Goals?
Any event you plan it is always better to start small and grow the event each year. Based on your goals you will decide on what you want to do to get there. Being the fundraising junkies that we are, we are always looking for the next event we can do and we hold multiple events throughout the year. How can we help our teammates reach their goals? What can we do different next year? We not only focus on raising money, but also talking about bike safety, sharing the services LIVESTRONG provides to the cancer community, plus recruiting riders and volunteers for the event.
We’ll be here for the next month talking about fundraising. We challenge you to start right now! In the next week go update your personal page on the 24 Foundation website (if you haven’t already) and to find one thing you can do to jump start or finish up your fundraising! There are online tutorials to help you with this if you need help! Just make sure to have fun and share in the comments what you are doing!!! Let’s finish up September strong!