Howdy,
My work is doing a 3 day/400 km ride next year to raise money for cancer research. I’m pretty keen to do it, but they want to make it really worthwhile and have asked for a set amount to cover expenses (which I’m happy to pay) as well as a minimum fundraising amount of $2500. Some of the honchos will get a lot more than this, so they’re hoping to raise in the vicinity of half a million dollarydoos.
My question: how achievable do you reckon the $2.5k is? Keeping in mind I don’t have access to big money backers and it’ll be mostly family and friends and some work colleagues. I’ve never done fundraising with a minimum limit before and am slightly concerned that it’ll be out of my reach.
Sounds tough to me if you’re just relying on individual donations. My only real experience is several years of Movember; I hit the fundraising pretty hard and I don’t think I ever got close to 2.5k. If you could get a company to chip in you might have a shot.
I think the difficulty of the endeavour matters a lot for fundraising, an old school friend recently raised 11k for charity doing the kokoda trail, so I would think 2.5k is feasible dependant on how long you have to fundraise for it.
Just do it on a NOBR AKES track bike and watch the coffers fill.
I’d have the same concerns as you, but also be keen to do it. A few things I can think of right off the bat:
negotiate with your work to have the minimum limit lowered. Use the same arguments as above.
if you get a ‘no’, then discuss with work/colleagues on how to find deep-pocketed donors (i.e. not family and friends, unless you have heaps).
I think given that you have to pay expenses and that the minimum is high, your work should give you a hand in finding donors. Sounds like a lot to ask to pay for expenses, do the ride and meet the high minimum by finding donors yourself. Maybe your work could prepare something like a list/blog of you guys who want to do it with a bit of a riding profile for each one of you, so donors can choose their riders? Send all that to other companies/workplaces that your work partners with/do some marketing maybe?
Unrelated/just curious: Where do you work? A bank or something?
The company being what it is, I can guarantee that there’ll be all sorts of leveraging of relationships to get money in. As noted above, they really do want to raise a shitload of cash, hence the paying expenses AND having a pretty high minimum.
I get the feeling that the people being targeted for the ride are those who are fairly high up and pretty well connected with a lot of high-net-worth folks, the kind who chuck in five hunge without a thought. I’m a humble librarian who doesn’t mix in those circles, hence my concern.
The ride isn’t til early March, but I’d probably need to get my name in and get started on the fundraising pretty soon if I wanted to get close. I’m not really sure about the viability of getting other companies to sponsor me as this is very much a “branded” exercise as part of a big birthday that my work has next year.
Thanks for your thoughts. I might drop the organisers a line and see what’s what.
Haven’t done any fundraising myself, but my missus recently did the shave for a cure. She ended up raising a similar amount to what you’re aiming for (Between 2-2.5K)
Majority of the donations were just from friends and family (who are by no means loaded), but she also approached local businesses for donations (in the form of goods, not cash) to go towards an auction that she conducted over Facebook which actually ended up being quite successful.
spam your link on the interwebs.
im currently raising funds and have my link in bio signatures etc.
sadly no family members have donated yet i’ll have to put the hard word on them.
you could say youll ride in a g banger or something outrages perhaps.
My Gong Ride fundraising almost solely consists of emailing/FB’ing friends and people I’ve worked with/for over the last 10 years (and have a good working and personal relationship with). I wouldn’t bother with the professional relationships I consider purely work related, regardless of time frame. If I was doing a more serious charity ride with a big target, this would also be my start point, with a more in-depth explanation of what is involved in the particular event. Also, if you know someone with whatever it is they’re raising funds for, that may open a few wallets. My brother has a good mate with MS, so he shares my fundraising page and his mates sling me a few bucks. It all adds up.
Big organisations tend to run bigger connections, and as a result, more money floating about. Talk up the tax deductions, if they apply, that seems to help convince some people.
My family did a charity ride three years in a row where we road 300k in one day, what we did was collect money as we went but spent the months leading up to it asking sports people to donate items signed, or we would ask big shops for items and we would have famous people sign them.
We raised about $30k-$50k each time.
If there is a dinner after could you try a similar thing where you could try to get items donated and signed?
Pretty cr@p to be honest, which is why I’ll contribute if you do decide to go. If the research means even just one person doesn’t have to go through what I am currently going through it will be so worth it!
Sorry to hear Dalai, condolences. Lost my dad to cancer six years ago. In spite of the sadness, I’m really irritated by a lot of the rhetoric and language used around cancer and a lot of the fundraisers but it seems to definitely resonate with people and I’ll definitely put in Jono. Won’t change your target much cos I’m poor as but there it is.
Thanks guys. What annoys me most is seeing the discrimination based on the cancer you have!
Rare cancer sufferers already facing the challenge of a cancer diagnosis are often discriminated against just on the basis of their cancer; being forced to pay for medicines which are free to other cancer patients!
During chemo after the initial diagnosis, my wife’s Neutrophils took a big hit which is common - usually the Oncologists don’t like to administer chemo when Neutrophils are under 1 - hers was 0.1 and as she was allergic to antibiotics there was a huge risk with even catching the smallest of sniffles. If her cancer was Breast cancer and not the very rare Neuroendocrine Carcinoma, the drug G-CSF which bolsters Neutrophil production would have been free where we were looking at a $6K+ bill for a couple of doses!
Also after the second and final relapse, our only option was to try a new Immunology treatment Keytruda which is on the PBS for Melanoma’s. If that is what she had, if would have been $6 per dose every three weeks. We were looking at a bill of $6K every three weeks which if successful would have been needed indefinitely!
In both cases it wasn’t the government coming to our aid, rather the Pharma companies. They provided free compassionate doses of the G-CSF and compassionate charges for the Keytruda so we were only paying 50% or ~$3K per three week dose…
send the link around…do all the social networking stuff…get some influencing friends to big it up on their social network…make a video of yourself crashing in a funny way and post it up with links, and if it goes viral you get more exposure…
that last one is a joke…but it would probably work pretty well.
2.5k is a bit much though if you dont have access to rich friends of corporate backers…
You could do a vlog over the 3 days and get it sponsored by some gear/bike brands.
I did the Tour De Cure ride early this year 10 days/1600km for cancer research and the minimum fundraising target was $12k. The fundraising is easily the hardest and most stressful part about it. I’m just a shitkicker so no corporate backing or easily milkable sources, just had to do a lot of groundwork. It’s a bit annoying when you are riding with ceos and cfos of huge corporations who can get mates to just drop in thousands like it’s pocket change, but surpassing the target on your own is a good feeling I guess. I ran a raffle, held a couple of lawn bowls events, even just having shit like a table tennis tournament at my place, providing food/beer and making friends donate to enter.
