Fundraising for dummies

I love control, but who doesn't right?
Saying that having no control is a problem for me would be huge understatement. Its just not in my nature to lay down and take the cards that have been handed to me. If I don't like what I get, I throw it back.
Dealing with my moms kidney disease diagnosis was no different. But once you or your love one has changed diets, started the donor process, or found someone willing to, what more can be done? Well....... LOTS!!!

It looks like my mom could receive a kidney relatively soon (provided my sisters tests come back negative). Like all who receive a transplant she can look forward to paying the exorbitant fees that accompany such a procedure. Insurance will cover the transplant, and most of the immunosuppressant medication she will have to take for the rest of her life, but they will not cover all of those drug costs.

How do you bridge the gap? After all this is no minor expense. Ahhhhh....the point of this blog..... Fundraising!!!! Like all things worth doing in life, this too takes effort.

Its been a long time since I've been in school, and my job doesn't require any letter/proposal writing skills of any type, so I was about as rusty a WWII tank left in the pacific (that's really rusty). So I started where everything starts these days... on line, and it all came flooding back to me.

• First, decide what kind of fundraiser you want to have (this is the easy part), a dance, a walk/run, spaghetti dinner, bake sale, raffle, or like me, a cocktail party. Not so hard.
• Now you need to decide where you would like to hold your event, and when.
• Then how will you advertise the event? A little more difficult, but easy enough.

Next comes the real fun. Writing a proposal, and like I said, unless you do this with some regularity (which I do not), it may be something of a hurtle.

• step 1: Introduction, a quick story to grab at the heart strings and pull them in
• step 2: Why them? What are they going to get out of this? After all, for most people/business, unless they are personally affected or will gain something they usually wont get involved. Sad but true, I speak from my recent experiences.
• step 3: How are you going to make it easy for them to help
• step 4: Ending

Sounds pretty simple, and for some more practiced people I'm sure it would be, but this took me two months. Two months of outlining, writing, refining, tweaking, finessing, cramming in, scratching out, ripping out, re-writing, begging it to write itself (yup.. I talked to my paper), and finally.....sweet Jesus..... I was finished!!!
Writing that is.... advertising was is a whole other topic. For that I called and e-mailed every newspaper and radio station I could. Most radio stations never responded, but a few did. The newspapers I had better luck with, but when you're willing pay for an advertisement of course they will respond. I was able to get the Sun Journal to do an article, and I'm pretty happy with that. I will also print up fliers and hand them out all over Portland, Falmouth, Poland, and any other town I feel like littering. I will also use this wonderful new thing called social networking, if any of you have heard of it please help me spread the word. I'll be posting the info. (date/time/place) shortly.
When I was all done I had my proposal printed out and took it around to all the local restaurants, asked nicely to see the owner/manager, and handed over all my hard work. I'm happy to say it paid off too. We are just starting to discuss details so...more on that later......