The "Pink Hair Challenge"

I had then decided to go a little more creative, and a little more crazy!  I emailed a company called Streakers, and asked them if they would be willing to donate bottles of pink hair dye for my facebook pink hair challenge.  They responded immediately with a yes!!!  (roller coaster going up...)  So I put out another note on fb, tagging everyone again.  I told everyone that if they would donate $35 or more in the designated 3 weeks, I would put one pink streak in my hair for them and wear it for 3 months! ( I had to use the kind that washes out, since my employer denied my request to have pink streaked hair for a little while, even when I explained that it was a fundraiser for the Susan G. Komen foundation, it was shot down.)  Well it was slow going at first, and at the start of week three I'd only gotten 3 people to donate (roller coaster going down again...), so only 3 pink streaks in my hair.  And one donation was even from my parents!

Well halfway through week 3 when I was depressed over having to wear only 3 pink streaks, reminding me everyday for 3 months of a fundraising failure, it happened.  I received 4 more donations, which made it 7 streaks in my hair!  My goal was 9, but I surpassed my monetary goal and raised over $500 with my crazy pink hair!  That  I definately considered a success!  (roller coaster up again...)  I was proud to wear my 7 pink streaks for 3 months, and even though I probably looked strange to the average passerby (a 38 yr old women does not normally have pink hair), I actually liked and got used to my hair this way.  I was a little sad when my 3 months were up!

I am hoping to get Streakers to donate their hair dye again, so that I can do this fundraiser again!  This one actually worked; it's a keeper!  This is an idea I recommend to try!

The letter...

Now it was time to start writing letters.  I had decided to write one to all the men on my list, and a separate one for all the women on my list.  So I started with the guys, but didn't get anywhere.  So then I tried starting with the women, and my pen flew!  I was really excited about this letter, it had all the things the 3 day coach that held the get started meeting stated should be in it, and I thought my "why I am walking" paragraph would touch even people who didn't know anyone with breast cancer.  After that the letter to the guys rolled right of my pen as well.  I thought I had done a pretty good job.  Not as creative as some that I had read, but I thought it would do what I needed it to do; raise most of my $3000.  Shortly after writing this my teammate messaged me on fb to tell me that she wrote a note on facebook and tagged everyone she knew in it (which is an extremely time consuming enterprise, since you can only tag 30 people at a time) and she was already getting donations!  I was so excited!!!  Well I dropped everything and stayed up very late that night posting my letters and tagging everyone.  I didn't get the same sort of response.  I received only a few comments instead of donations.  And so the roller coaster ride of emotions that comes with participating in the 3 day began it's first drop down...

But of course that mood was shortly replaced by excitement and anticipation again, as I received my first donation from an old school friend that I hadn't seen since we graduated!  So I emailed, mailed, and facebooked EVERYONE I knew (including my doctor, dentist, and insurance guy), and started writing letters to businesses around town.  I wrote these companies asking for a donation, and when it applied, for the opportunity to put a jar by their register to collect donations as well.  Well in the next few months the only responses I received were the American Legion - $100 (woohoo!  I was excited about that one), my insurance guy - $25, the VFW - $25, and Safeway was kind enough to give me a $10 gift card to their store.  Not so profitable for about 50 letters and lots of money spent in stamps, but oh well.  By this point I had received about $300 from friends and family also.  I was now realizing that my letter wasn't going to work as well as I planned, and figured out that I needed alot more plans...

And so it begins...

I wish that I had read a blog about the 3 Day when I signed up last February.  I wish I had known someone who had experienced it, and could have told me what to expect.  But instead I went in blind...

For those who don't know what this is:  The Susan G. Komen 3 Day for the Cure is a 60 mile, 3 day walk held in different cities on different weekends all over the country throughout the summer and fall each year, raising wonderfully insane amounts of money for breast cancer research.  I signed up for the Washington DC 2010 walk, held October 8th-10th.  In order to participate, you and each team member (if you are on a team) have to raise a minimum of $2,300. 

Yes, that's an astonomical amount to raise!  Insane!  If you've ever tried to sell something or fundraise in any form, you KNOW how hard that is!  I could barely get anyone to look at a brochure from my children's school, yet I signed up to raise $2,300.  I had NO idea how I was going to pull that off, but at the Get Started informational meeting last February, I signed up anyway.  And I brought 2 of my sister-in-laws with me, in hopes that if I was going to do this, someone would be willing to do this with me.  They were crazy enough to sign up too!  So now full of enthusiasm, we were registered as walkers, and team Me and The Girls was born.  Of course we had no idea how to even begin to raise that amount of money.  But together we agreed to give it a try.

The very next night I set up my Susan G. Komen website, where I posted my story about why I wanted to walk and how much I wanted to raise, and to my astonishment I put $3,000 as my goal to raise!  Not exactly sure what I was thinking there...   After that the first step was to write letters and email/ mail them to everyone I had any kind of address for. 

More tomorrow...