Super Speedy Fundraising with Ragnar Relay

Tomorrow we are picking our routes for the Ragnar Relay: Wasatch Back race.  As mentioned in this previous post, route selection will be based on who has accomplished the most fundraising.  This has turned out to be an amazing motivational tool to get the team excited about raising money for cancer research.  In a single month’s time, we have raised nearly the entire amount of our fundraising minimum.  At this moment, we have raised just under $11,500 and we are just $1,000 short of our minimum goal to be able to race.  The team has been amazing at fundraising.

There’s been numerous fundraising high lights so far.  Ones that come to mind are Diana Bateman being the first one to hit $500 and raising her goal to $1000 shortly thereafter.  Jodi Vargas, Mandy Fuhriman, and Ryan Smith each raised $500 or close to it in just a couple of days. But, this week has been the most exciting so far.  I announced to the team on Friday that we had made the $9,000 mark, 75% of our goal.  I came back to work on Monday and found out that over the weekend we had raised another $1,000.  I was so excited, but the team had even more in them.  The next day, I was elated to see that our team had done even more and raised $1,500 in 24 hours.  I seriously don’t think there’s anything these guys can’t do.  

This has seriously been one of the best things I have done in a while.  This also has got to be one of the most effective fundraising tools out there for charity running groups.  Figuring that the average cost of an entry for a Ragnar Relay is $1,500 and that, at least for the Huntsman Hometown Heroes program, the minimum fundraising goal per team is $6,000, you have a return on investment of 300%.  It’s also an awesome way to recruit people into the organization.  So far, our two Ragnar teams have recruited 26 new individuals into the Huntsman Hometown Heroes program.  A few of these are even from outside of Utah, which gives the HHH program national exposure.  The Ragnar Relay may very well be the most effective charity running event around.  See if there is one in your area and if you can get a charity running team together.  You’ll be happy you did.

Earning BIG bucks with Charitable Foundations

For a lot of the members of our team, the basic friends and family approach to fundraising has proven highly successful.  In this style of fundraising, you write a quick email and send it out to your close friends and family.  The email usually has a paragraph or two about why the person is raising funds, has a picture, and asks for people to go to their donation page and help out.  We’ve had a number of people on our team make the individual goal of raising $500 in 24 hours or less using this tactic.  However, I’m not so lucky.

This is the third time I’ve raised money for HHH and I think that my friends and family pool has dried out.  I sent out an email to 30 of my closest friends and family and I only got two donations out of it, for which I am very grateful.  I’ve plastered status updates all over Facebook, to the point that I’ve probably annoyed most people.  I got one donation out of that.  With that being said, I’m declaring my family and friends a dried up funding source and I’m looking at additional ways to raise funds.  That’s partially what this blog is about.  I’m hoping that eventually it gets big enough that I can get some serious numbers of followers, which might donate, or maybe even get a brand to sponsor some advertisements with the proceeds going to HHH.

Another avenue that we are pursuing is charitable foundations and grants.  These are not as reliable as family and friends can be, but they have bigger pay-offs.  One member of HHH, who is participating in a different race, got a single donation from the God, Family, and Country foundation for $2,500.  If our team could get just one grant of similar size, we would be nearly done with our fundraising.  

I did some more browsing and I ended up discovering the National Center for Charitable Statistics. On their site, I found a list of local charitable organizations as well as the total amount in grants that they give out on a yearly basis.  The list for local Utah county organizations was also extensive and listed 160 charitable foundations in Utah county alone.  Hopefully this website can help others as they seek to find donors to help them in their fundraising endeavors.

I emailed the rest of our team to see if anyone else would be interested in contacting these groups, and I got another lead from one of our team members.  She said that she kept hearing on the radio about a Utah competition for charitable organizations that was sponsored by Select Health.  The contest awards $2,500 grants to 25 organizations spread throughout the state.  Applications are capped at the first 500 submissions.  I forwarded this on to HHH and they applied for me in my name.  If we end up winning it will be the easiest fundraising I’ve ever done.  You can read more about the competition at www.select25.org and even see past winners.

Half Way There.

This last week our team hit the half way mark for our fundraising goal of $12,000.  All of this momentum has mostly happened within the last month. Prior to this month, I think our team raised around $1,700 over a 2-3 month period.  We really saw a shift in the fundraising this last month.  I think most of this momentum can be contributed to one aspect that is unique to running a Ragnar relay.

At the beginning of January, our team decided that we would give preference for route selection based on who had completed the most fundraising.  A Ragnar race can be very different for each individual runner depending on what position they run in.  Some runners will have lots of uphill, some lots of downhill.  Only half of each team needs to be at the actual start line.  Most people will have some kind of preference for what leg they want to run.  We made one caveat, any of the cancer survivors or previvors would get to pick before any of the employees. Most of the survivors and previvors are flying in from sea level and won’t be used to the higher elevation here in Utah.  This is one of the great things about using a Ragnar relay event as a charity fundraiser.  The dynamics of the event allow you to create a pretty effective motivational tool to inspire people to raise funds.  It also allows you to create a milestone before the final fundraising deadline, which helps motivate people to donate sooner.

We’ve had some truly remarkable fundraisers in our group.  Multiple people have met the $500 minimum or, come close to it, in less than 24 hours time.  These individuals have a very supportive family and friend network and are able to garner support with a simple email.  They are a great asset to the team and we are glad to have them aboard.

Members of Huntsman Hometown Heroes (HHH) are really starting to take notice of our group.  Our team has currently raised $7,251 as of today.  This puts us as one of the top, if not the top, fundraising teams at the moment for HHH.  There is still a lot of time left before the final deadline and we still have quite a bit of money to raise.  Our team still has quite a few more ideas to try out, so stay tuned.  

We have a very special team working together.  If you’d like to make a contribution and help us out, you can visit http://ragnarrelay.kintera.org/collincburton and make a donation. Thanks for reading.