The Sauntering Sommeliers Are On the Move!
Last summer when a group of us signed up to do the 2009 Rocky Mountain Avon Walk for breast cancer, it seemed like we had all the time in the world to train and raise money. But lo and behold, January is here and we’re less than six months from event weekend. We took some time out from our holiday merrymaking to plan our fundraising events for the next few months.
There are seven of us on the team, ranging in age from 25 to 54. Most of us live in the Denver area, but two of our members live in Phoenix. We enjoy different levels of fitness and fundraising expertise, so we decided to do some joint events to complement our individual efforts.
I registered our domain name with GoDaddy and set up our team blog on Typepad. (About the name — one of our members is a wine rep, and the rest of us appreciate a nice glass or two. We thought “Sauntering Sommeliers” would be better for fundraising than “Walking Winos.”) The blog will be one tool we’ll use for promoting our events, thanking our sponsors, and keeping our supporters updated on our progress. The Avon walk also gives us individual pages and a team page, but we wanted to have a little more creative control and fun with it. On the blog I included an About Us page; contact info; a tip jar in case anyone wants to make a small donation; links to our Avon fundraising pages; sponsor links; and a Tribute Wall, a place to list friends and family who have battled breast cancer.
Our Denver events will include two garage sales in early spring in two different neighborhoods so that we can take advantage of the pent-up garage sale mania that comes at the end of a long winter. We’ll be collecting slightly-used treasures from our friends who want to do some spring cleaning and donate their cast-offs to a good cause. Our Phoenix members will come to help us, and if they do one in Arizona, some of us will probably be there for them too. We’ll also be selling some of the better stuff on Ebay to reach a larger audience.
With the wine and restaurant connection, we’ll be holding two or three wine tastings at local eateries. We’re not sure yet what form those will take, but at least one of them will include a silent auction. We’ll evite everyone we know and send out press releases to our local media.
One of our members has monthly staff meetings at his place of business. The company buys lunch for everyone, and it usually consists of pizza or other boring food. He’s going to see if we can provide lunch instead — they’ll make a donation to the team and we’ll get many, if not all, of the ingredients donated from local grocery stores. Once a month we’ll use my kitchen to turn out 50 healthy, tasty, yet simple brown bag lunches. It will be a great way to build awareness of the cause and our fundraising efforts. It’s not as labor-intensive as a garage sale, and since a couple of us are cooks, we’ll have fun doing it too.
Our goal is to raise $15,000 while we build awareness and have a good time with it. Breast cancer is a serious disease, but you can’t always beat people over the head with scary statistics and gloom and doom. We plan to put the fun back in fundraising while we’re making a difference. I’ll keep you posted on our progress, and if any of you would like to share your own successful fundraising strategies, I’d love to hear them.
Happy New Year!
Good luck with your fundraising goals!
A bit off topic – how do you like Typepad? I’m currently using Wordpress.com for my Bike Diva blog. Looking at starting a running blog, and I’m thinking of switching over to Typepad.
Take care,
Lynn