Bitten off more than we can chew?
Feb. 20th, 2010 07:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
angledgehotpantsgalore is out training right now, doing a bike ride with her team. It's about two months until her triathlon, & she's really getting serious about the training. Her arms are showing the effects of two swim workouts a week, & her legs - my God, her legs - are getting stronger & stronger from all the biking & running. However, she still bitches about getting out of bed EVERY SINGLE MORNING.
The fundraising side of this whole project is causing me immense amounts of heartburn. When I did my triathlon back in 2006, I also remember sweating about the dollars. The reason for this is that when you sign up with Team in Training, you promise that if you can't raise the minimum required amount, you will pay the difference yourself.
In HPG's case, her minimum is $3,600. So far, she's raised exactly $1,721.18. A little quick math tells me that we have $1,878.82 left to raise -- or, we've got to pay it ourselves. Gulp.
I think that we both underestimated just how difficult fundraising was going to be in the current economic climate. Also, I think that a lot of people gave money to Haiti, & are still feeling tapped out. I know I've asked my LJ friends for money many times on behalf of Team in Training & the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, but I'm going to ask again. I'll probably keep asking until cancer is cured. Because even in hard economic times, & even after major natural disasters, the need for money to fight cancer doesn't go away. It doesn't even diminish.
So if you've got $10 to spare. Or better yet, $50. Please visit HPG's webpage & make a donation. It's super-fast, done via a secure server, & the donation is 100% tax-deductible.
Thanks!
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Date: 2010-02-20 03:32 pm (UTC)(For some reason, I like the idea that some of the commission my boss is getting goes out to good causes through me.)
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Date: 2010-02-20 03:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-20 04:11 pm (UTC)As cynical as it sounds, I'd suggest that she drop her goal to $3,000 until it's met. That will make everybody's donation seem that much more important on that little bar-graph thingie and, when it gets closer to 100%, will pull on heartstrings all the more for people to put her over. (Public television pledge drives are famous for this; they take it a step further and never show the goal actually being met, so they can rely on that psychology to get even more $ in.)
As for the people who run this thing: DO NOT LIKE. Putting donors under that kind of stress, particularly where they're going to be enduring severe cardiac stress of the other kind, is not a particularly charitable thing to do. Likewise, they don't treat the donors terribly well: the donation page is a jumbly mess in Firefox (although I'm sure it renders perfectly well in Inferno Explorer), and before you can donate, you have to give them all kinds of personal information, NOT needed to confirm the donation, that I'm sure is just so they can put names and email addresses on "sucker lists" for other charities. Stick to your cause, LLS, and hire some competent programmers while you're at it.
Now get off my lawn.
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Date: 2010-02-20 04:41 pm (UTC)2) The reason they make you promise to make your minimum is that they want to be able to always say that 75% of the monies raised goes to the cause. So they figure how much they spend to train you (coaching costs, race registration, etc.) & multiply it by four.
3) I agree that it's stressful, but it's also successful. TNT has raised hundreds of millions of dollars (can't find the exact figures right now). They are far & away the largest endurance training/fundraising organization in the country, & the difference is the high minimums they set for participants.
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