A day of rest

Today was a day of rest from road training. I focused on following-up with potential donors who had pledged, but not yet donated. Many, many thanks to everyone who donated. At the start of the day, our donations climbed from $9,755 to $10,500 by day’s end. I am certain that with everyone’s help we can continue blasting through the $10,000 milestone, and go beyond the adjusted goal of $15,000.

A bit about the donation goal. Each cyclist is required to raise a $3,000 minimum. That definitely sounded like a lot of money (it is!) but ALC provides each cyclist with some great tools and support, including a Participant Representative to make it as easy as possible to reach our goal!

Using the Facebook App to generate my Facebook Cover photo and donation link, I jumped into fundraising mode.

• The first Sunday night, 1/26/14, after completing registration by posting on my Facebook timeline, with an initial goal of $3,000. 
• The next day, after receiving the first four donations just from Facebook, I saw no reason not to increase the goal to $5,000. That Monday, I initiated an email campaign to a measly 3 friends and realized after receiving a few more donations, I had to gear up the email campaign. 
• Five days later Friday, 1/31/14, I had emailed 65 family members and friends, and had passed the $3,000 mark. 
• Eight days later on Monday, 2/3/14, the joy of knowing folks wanted to donate fueled me to increase the goal to $10,000. Really, Art? Could you really do this? 
• Eighteen days later, I’m tickled pink to share with everyone that as mentioned earlier that the $10,000 milestone has been passed and the goal increased. I've also contacted through Facebook, email, and phone calls 200 family, friends and acquaintances.

I work with Participant Representative, Meredith Slater, who has been a great help in giving me a bit more motivation to exceed the milestones. Cheers to Meredith. Besides moral support and providing guidance, she pointed out the personalized donation forms that I can print out and have with me at-the-ready to use them out on the road, parties, shopping, any place that will have someone waiting, wanting to donate to our cause.