How to Raise Thousands of Dollars
in FIVE Easy Steps
. . . and Have FUN Doing It.
Fundraising, even if it’s for a very worthy cause like the American Heart Association
(AHA), is no easy task. However, it can be fun. I like to think about it as a Fun Raising
experience rather than a fundraising one.
Raising money should be an easy and fun experience for the any AHA event (whether
it’s the 13.1 mile half-marathon, a 10K or 5K walk or run or even the bike ride).
Fun Raising is simple. Just follow the FIVE easy steps:
1. Personalize your FREE Start Training webpage.
2. Make a list of your potential donors.
3. Announce your participation in the AHA event.
4. Issue progress reports.
5. Write thank you notes.
That’s it – five easy steps and you’re on your way to raising thousands of dollars!
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Rev. April 2015 Step One: Personalize your FREE AHA event webpage
The moment you register for an AHA event, you’re automatically given your own
webpage . . . absolutely free! To make it your own (everybody gets a generic webpage), you
need to customize it.
A. Insert a photo of yourself;
• Replace of the generic photos/logos on the webpage. Have a friend take a photo with
a digital camera or a phone camera and load it onto your webpage.
B. Create a message – why you are participating.
• If you are a survivor, mention it and also how grateful you are to the American Heart
Association for all the great work it’s doing.
• If you’ve lost a loved one to heart disease, state that you’re participating “in memory” of
that person.
• Or (my favorite): state that you’re participating in the AHA event and invite your friends
to join the PARTY! If they don’t want to walk and/or run with you (and most of them won’t want
to either walk or run), they can still support you with their donations . . . and you will walk and/or
run for them.
C. Set a fundraising goal.
• Make your goal DOUBLE what you think you can raise. If you think you can raise
$500, set your goal as $1,000.
• I recommend you Go BIG! Set your goal for at least a $1,000! Let your friends know
that you’re after BIG money.
• You can always revise your goal upwards. If you set your goal at $1,000 and you’re
getting close to that number, you can change your goal to $1,500 or more.
D. Update your webpage as needed.
• You can also change/update your webpage at any time. Insert a different photo.
Change/revise your message. Revise your fundraising goal . . . upwards.
Step 2: Make a list of your potential donors
• Write down the names of at least 20 potential donors. (What-do-you-mean you don’t
know 20 potential donors? Of course, you do. Just keep reading.)
• Start your list with people you know will support you; even include people you know will
not support you. You may be surprised. Some of the people you knew would support you may
not and (surprise! surprise!), some of the people you knew would never part with their money
end up sending a big check.
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Rev. April 2015 • Start your list by going through your address book (if you have one) and/or your email
list (you know there are hundreds of names there . . . including some of the people you either
don’t know or can’t remember).
• Go through your Christmas card list. Who did you send out cards to and who sent you
cards?
th
• Plan a “celebration” (your 30 birthday party, a wedding, anniversary, a I’ve-dumpedhim/her party or whatever). Who would you invite to your big bash? Include family and friends.
You know that if you invite “A”, you’d have to invite “B” and “C”, too, because they’re good
friends. Then if you invite “C”, you’d have to invited “D”, “E” and “F” . . . and so on. Before you
know it, your make-believe invite list would have grown to major proportions.
• Include co-workers on your list, including your boss and your boss’s boss. If you’re
participating as an office team, include former co-workers, co-workers from other jobs you’ve
had.
• Include service and health professionals on your list. Include your doctor (isn’t he
always telling you to exercise more?), your dentist, your podiatrist, your friendly grocery clerk,
your hairdresser/stylist/barber, etc. – all the people who service you regularly.
• Check the membership of all the clubs and organizations that you belong to. Ask the
club newsletter editor to include a blurb about your participation in the AHA event in their next
newsletter.
• Payback time (my all-time favorite): Who in the last year has solicited you for
donations? Girl Scout cookies, AIDS Walk, magazine drives, school candy sales, raffle tickets,
etc. Well, it’s payback time.
By now, you should have at least 100 names on your potential donor list. (See, I told
you that you’d find that many potential donors . . . and more!) This is a growing list – add to it as
you think of more potential donors.
In addition to the names, include the home addresses AND the email addresses of your
potential donors. (I recommend you making up two sets of addresses labels with the names and
addresses of your potential donors – I’ll tell you why later.)
Step 3: Announce your participation in the AHA event
• Send out an “announcement” to all your potential donors. I highly recommend sending
it via U.S. Mail. It’s well worth it to spend 49 cents on postage (unfortunately the price of first
class mail went up to 49 cents last year) to hopefully get a $20, $50, $100 or more in donations.
Sending out an announcement by first-class mail tells your friends that you think they’re “firstclass” too and it also shows your personal commitment to the cause. (Remember I
recommended printing 2 sets of address labels – well, you’re going to need one to send out your
announcements.)
• Include in the announcement the fact that you’re participating in the AHA event, the
date (August 23, 2015), location (starting from AT&T Park), etc. Invite them to join you (even
though you know your fellow couch-potato friends won’t). Then invite them to support you with
their donations to the American Heart Association.
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Rev. April 2015 l• Be sure to include your personal AHA Start Training website address
(http://www.starttrainingbayarea.heart.org/yourname ) in the announcement – that’s how they’ll
be able to follow your progress and earn more about the AHA event. Check to make sure what
your personal web address is.
• Also let them know how they can make donations – either by donating online at your
personal website or by sending you a check made payable to the American Heart Association –
I’m sure you’d be glad to forward the check(s) to the AHA. Forward all checks that you receive
to:
The American Heart Association
Attn: Start Training
th
426 – 17 Street, Suite 300
Oakland, CA 94612.
Make sure the checks are made payable to the American Heart Association. If your donors
made the check(s) payable to you, endorse them on the back with “Pay to the order of the
American Heart Association” and then sign your name.
• Let them know that if their company has matching funds, they can in effect DOUBLE
their donation.
• The announcement should be short, sweet, simple and personal. Avoid the typical
organizational solicitation look – you know that those get toss into the garbage without ever
being read.
• I like sending out my announcement in a notecard format – you know, like a greeting
card. There are many software programs that allow you to do this. (I use “The Print Shop”
program.
• I didn’t do this but one of my friends did . . . and she turned out to be a TOP fundraiser!
Along with her announcements, she included a STAMPED self-address return envelope for her
friends to send their donation checks to her. It worked. Nobody throws away a stamped selfaddress return envelope.
Step 4: Issue Progress Reports
• Send out (weekly? monthly?) Progress Reports. Let your potential donors know how
things are going.
In your Progress Reports, you might want to include the following:
• Thank all of the donors who have already donated for their generosity.
• Remind those who haven’t donated yet that they can still donate online or by sending
you a check made payable to the American Heart Association -- many of your friends “forget” or
they tell themselves that they’ll do it “later.”
• Let them know you haven’t reached your fundraising goal yet. (If you’re getting close,
you might have to revise your fundraising goal upwards.)
• Include a link to your personal Half-Marathon website
(http://www.starttrainingbayarea.heart.org/yourname).
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Rev. April 2015 • Include a “gimmick” or two in your Progress Reports.
!
Offer to be the first sponsor of anyone who agrees to walk or run with you
in the AHA event. State that you’ll sponsor the first 100 persons who sign
up with you with a $100 donation each – don’t worry, you won’t get very
many takers, but you’ll get a lot of interest.
!
Have a “I’d love to join you in the AHA event but I can’t because
_________________” contest. (Examples: I gotta wash my car on
Saturdays or I have to take the dog to get his pedicure, etc.) The person
with the craziest or most creative excuse wins. Of course, you’d expect
them to enclose a donation with their entries.
!
Tell your backers that you will print their names on the back of your AHA
event jersey/T-shirt – that way they can truly be one of your “backers.”
!
Plan a Thank You Party for all of your donors.
• Keep the “buzz” going.
Step 5: Write Thank You notes.
• Perhaps the most important thing you do after learning that someone has made a
donation is to write a thank you note and send it to that person via the U.S. Mail. Spend the 49
cent stamp to let them know you appreciate their $20, $50, $100+ donation. (Remember that I
recommend having 2 sets of address labels? You need one for your announcement and another
for your thank you note.)
• Include the donation amount on your thank you notes. The donors might want to save
the notes for tax deduction purposes. You may wish to include the following statement in your
thank you note: “Your gift is tax deductible to the extent allowed by the law. The American Heart
Association is a registered 501(c)3 organization. No goods or services were provided for this
donation. The AHA tax ID# is 13-5613797.”
• If possible, handwrite and sign your thank you notes. If you are using pre-printed thank
you cards, include at least a handwritten line on the card.
• If you receive two donations from the same person, you should write a second thank
you note.
That’s it. Follow these five easy steps and you’re on your way to collecting thousands of
dollars in donations.
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Rev. April 2015 Final note:
The above obviously represents a small fraction of the fun things that you can do. Share
your ideas with your teammates. Share copies of your announcements, your progress reports,
etc. with them, too.
Also please send copies of your suggestions/questions/comments and copies of your
announcements, reports, etc. Lindsay Ring at Lindsay.Ring@heart.org and/or Sam Louie at
samlouie8@yahoo.com . Please indicate whether or not she has your permission to share your
offering with other people participating in the AHA Half-Marathon.
Thank you.
Sam Louie
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Rev. April 2015