I asked a few of our current top fundraisers to give you a little insight into how they have been successful with fundraising. I hope this helps and even inspires you!

Mariah Burns

http://pages.teamintraining.org/dm/Canyon110/mburns5kzj

Mariah is on our Hike team and is a whiz with Social Media tools like Facebook and twitter. Here are the answers to some questions I posed to her:

1.You are doing great with your fundraising with over $1185 so far, easily meeting your re-commitment goal. How did you do it?

Social media and email. Facebook, twitter, Digg, Google Buzz. Pretty much anywhere I can put a link to my site, I have. I created a facebook event and invited all of my friends. This allowed me to divulge the full details and I can send updates and reminders about my progress. As far as emails, I started out with a mass email. Pretty much everyone in my address book got a standard email, then I did a handful of individualized emails.

2. Facebook has worked well for you. Do you have suggestions on how to get better results with Facebook?

Use facebook to its fullest. Create a fan page, make an event, send messages, update your status. If you do one of these every few days you’ll be surprised at the response you get.

3. If you could suggest 3 things to others who are fundraising, what would it be?

Use your resources. Tap into your social groups. Use the power of spreading the word. If someone can’t donate, ask them to tell 10 of their friends about what you’re doing or forward the email you sent to everyone they know. The farther your reach, the easier your fundraising becomes.

UPDATE: In the few days since I asked her these questions, she has raised another $200. One thing Mariah does is she sends personalized messages to Facebook friends asking them to donate. This has been especially effective.

Chacko Cherian

http://pages.teamintraining.org/dm/ambbr10/ccherian

Chacko is part of the Cycling team and is training for the America’s Most Beautiful Bike Ride. I am not sure I have ever seen anyone get a better start with their fundraising, so naturally I wanted Chacko to share his success with us.

1. You are doing great with your fundraising with over $1615 so far, easily meeting your re-commitment goal. How did you do it?

Starting early.I am taking a month break in March,so I had to get ahead with the fundraising in Jan and Feb.

2. How important has letter writing been to your fundraising?

I have sent a couple of letters out,but email has been my primary mode of fundraising.

3. Are there any other tools you have used successfully to fund raise?

I have used Garmin’s software that traces your biking route,your speed and elevation.This data gives more credibility to your donors as they exactly know what time and what day you did your ride instead of just saying I rode 50 miles on Saturday.

4. How have you used your fund raising website to help you?

Yes,a lot!

5. If you could suggest 3 things to others who are fundraising, what would it be?

I have never raised funds for any cause before this, and I never knew it would be so uncomfortable to ask your close friends for money. But keep going at it. Keep the motivation high.your donors should see your passion and enthusiasm in doing this ride,and this will get you through.

Just adding an article that I thought was a good read: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_archive/2010/03/01/105904263/index.htm?eref=aol

Have a successful story or tips of your own? Leave a comment below or email me your story.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 8:51 am and is filed under Fundraising Success Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.