Harley-Davidson fundraising efforts raised $87,000 for MDA at Sturgis Rally in South Dakota.

(WebWire) 8/22/2007 10:46:28 AM

Harley-Davidson’s fundraising efforts for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) raised more than $87,000 during the 2007 Sturgis Rally in Sturgis, SD. Harley-Davidson employees, MDA organizers and event volunteers participated in various activities to raise dollars during the event August 4-11.

Harley-Davidson and MDA volunteers sold event pins and raffle tickets for a 2008 Harley-Davidson FXSTC Softail Custom motorcycle customized by Willie G Davidson with special Sturgis graphics. As an added feature the motorcycle was fully accessorized with Genuine Motor Accessories™ installed live at the Harley-Davidson Road Tour Festival site at Rapid City’s Rushmore Plaza Civic Center. Rachel Hauser of Omaha, Nebraska won the one of a kind motorcycle.

Harley-Davidson has been a national sponsor of the Muscular Dystrophy Association since 1980 and the family of dealers, riders, suppliers and employees has raised more than $60 million for MDA. The funds raised support life-saving research, comprehensive medical care for children and adults with neuromuscular disease and MDA summer camps.

Read the full article here.

From Tewksbury, Massachusetts, one woman makes jewelry to sponsor herself in marathon walks to raise money in the fight against breast cancer. She also works full time, is writing a dissertation for her doctorate, and still trains for her walks (and I’m sure somewhere in all this has time for family and friends).

The art of fundraising
By Linda Kush/ Staff Writer
Thursday, August 3, 2006 - Updated: 08:29 AM EST

One afternoon last summer, Heather Maietta trudged along on aching, tired feet. Cranky and exhausted, she wondered what she could have been thinking when she decided to do this. It was the first day of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3-Day walk, and the 22-mile leg was almost done.

“I was so tired I didn’t even eat dinner, and I said to myself, ’I’m never doing this again,’” she said. “Then three days later after the closing ceremonies, I walked right over to the tent and signed up for next year.”

Although that first day was tough, the 60-mile walk over three days got easier. Every two miles, children and cancer survivors shouted support from the roadside. At night, she and hundreds of other walkers slept in a tent compound. The 34-year-old Tewksbury resident reveled in the sense of community and was proud that she had raised the required $2,100 to do the walk. The funds would help find a cure for breast cancer.

“It’s one of the most positive experiences I’ve ever had,” she said.

In fact, it was so positive that she’s doing it again this weekend, Aug. 4, 5 and 6.

But this time, raising the money seemed more daunting. It didn’t feel right to go back to the same friends and relatives for contributions.

Then she had the idea to let her jewelry raise the money for her.

Maietta designs jewelry and sells it at craft fairs, on her Web site and in places like Touch of Elegance salon in Tewksbury. Clusters of beads in subtle colors decorate her bracelets, necklaces, earrings and watches.

“I started out making jewelry for my sisters and for myself, and people would buy it off my body,” she said, extending a tanned arm to display a bracelet of aqua, green and clear glass beads. Someone would compliment her on a bracelet, and when she said she made it, they would ask her to make one for them. “But I could never make the exact same thing, so I would just take it off my wrist and sell it to them right there,” she said.

Her hobby grew into a business, heather M design.

She created a special line of jewelry to raise money for this year’s Breast Cancer 3-Day. Proceeds go toward the $2,200 she needs for the walk, and each piece with its pink ribbon motif raises more than just money.

“If someone is wearing jewelry with a pink ribbon, it raises awareness,” she said. “Raising the money is the hardest part, but doing it in conjunction with my business makes it a no-brainer.”

It’s a wonder she could find any time to do all that’s on her plate. In addition to making jewelry and selling it at craft shows on weekends, she works full time for the Arlington Department of Recreation while writing a dissertation for her doctorate in Education Administration and Community Leadership.

“The busier I am, the better I am, the more organized I am with my time,” she said.

Maietta was moved to do something for breast cancer research after her grandmother had a mastectomy that left her with limited use of her arm due to nerve damage.

“I have two sisters and a niece. I did it for them, my grandmother, my mother and myself.”

Maietta walks with a team, Wild Women Originals, 200 members who do fundraising walks and other activities to promote breast cancer research. Since 2002, they have raised over $1.9 million. Last year Maietta organized a craft fair with her team to help others raise money for the walk.

Lynn Ostberg, a WWO team captain, said, “With all the craft shows she does, Heather always has information about our team. More people find us through her.”

Maietta began preparing for this weekend’s walk last fall. She trains about 35 miles a week, not only for general fitness, but to toughen her feet so she can walk 60 miles over three days without blisters.

“Getting ready for this walk is like when I was planning my wedding,” she said, married to a Watertown firefighter.

“All the preparation, raising the money was difficult and the training is difficult. But it’s exciting now that it’s really happening. I look forward to doing it at last.”

Read the full article here.

Heather M Design website can be found here.

Team Wild Women Originals website can be found here.

Even without the heatwave the country is sweating through, this would be a great fundraising event to help out your local community. Check out this article from St. Louis, Missouri.

Cool Down St. Louis will host its fifth annual Cool Down Weekend at Busch Stadium two hours before the Cardinals-Brewers games begin on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

About 150 volunteers dressed in yellow caps and holding yellow buckets will collect donations for the organization to provide air conditioners and pay electric bills for the elderly, disabled and needy.

The drive raised almost $20,000 last year.

Read the full article here.

Do you yell “Fore!” or “Geranimo!” or just plain get out of the way at this fundraising event? Take a look at this idea from Nashua, NH we found.

[T]he Golf Ball Drop steadily pulls the fun in fundraising up a notch or two, using a helicopter to disburse 1,000 balls from overhead within moments.

According to event organizer Christina Austin, who is the YMCA of Greater Nashua’s administrative assistant, a former employee came up with this cool fundraising idea, which has grown in popularity each year. The rules are simple and the prizes plentiful.

The thousand golf balls will be dropped from a helicopter owned by Bob Clouthier of CR Helicopters of Nashua at an altitude of 500 feet above an area set up as a golf green at Camp Sargent. Balls are numbered to correspond with each purchase. Should your ball land a hole-in-one, you’ll go home $1,000 richer. There’s a $100 prize for the ball that lands closest to the pin, $75 for balls two through five that are closest to the pin, $50 for the sixth-closest to the pin and $50 for the ball that lands farthest from the pin.

How do you get in on the fun? Balls are being sold at the Nashua and Merrimack YMCAs at $10 each. Anyone who buys five balls will get a sixth one free.

Proceeds will benefit the YMCA’s Y Cares Financial Assistance Program, which lends support to individuals and families in the community who are living on fixed or limited incomes and can’t afford to pay for Y programs and services.

Read the full article here.

We ride ‘em. We race ‘em. Local businesses and families in the Chicago, Illinois area collect their pennies to rehabilitate them!

When horses young or old get sick, sometimes the easy option is to have the animal put down.

Sue Balla, president and co-founder of Field of Dreams Horse Rescue, says that instead, with a little love and a lot of help, those animals still can have a long life ahead of them.

However, rescuing horses that need a home and rehabilitation isn’t easy, either.

[A]rea businesses and families [help] by dropping their change into a Pennies for Ponies jar. The change-gathering effort will help pay for feed, rehabilitation and bedding for the animals, as well as the day-to-day costs of housing them.

Families also can become involved by collecting their spare change to donate to the horses.

The family that collects the most money will receive a day with the horses, a photo of the animals now at Field of Dreams, horse-themed books and note cards.

[…]

One St. Charles girl, Sarah Anderson, had friends and family donate money to the rescue rather than buy her a birthday gift, Balla said. That effort alone brought in $360 for the horses.

Read the full article here.

An article from “The York Daily Record” (York, PA) that calls attention to health guidelines affecting local fundraising efforts:

Fundraising foods on the table: Candy, pizza vs. fruit baskets
Some district officials know how to handle new guidelines and others don’t

By MICHELLE STARR
Daily Record/Sunday News

Jul 16, 2006 — Some district officials and parents are concerned that new wellness guidelines might hurt fundraising efforts.

School districts had to adopt wellness policies by July 1 if they participate in the National School Lunch or Breakfast Program.

The wellness policies should promote physical activity, healthy foods and making smart choices. The state Department of Education made a list of guidelines to help districts as they try to decide what food and drinks can be sold at lunch, in vending machines, at school stores and fundraising activities.

The department also suggests that food should not be used as a reward in school or that parents not bring in goodies to celebrate special events.

Brian McDonald, department spokesman, said many district officials appear confused because the guidelines aren’t mandates. They are suggestions.

“We say, ‘Here are some good things we think you should do,’ ” McDonald said. “We would hope that they would follow the guidelines in a relatively close manner.

But it’s their decision. “It doesn’t get to a specific level that outright bans one thing over another,” McDonald said.

The guidelines have caused some concern among a few parents and administrators especially because selling food such as candy, cookies or pizzas is used to raise funds. In some districts, the parent groups or activity coordinators aren’t sure yet how the policies will affect them or haven’t determined a plan.

Lisa Warren, president of the Dover Area High School Parent Teacher Organization and past vice president of the same group at Weigelstown Elementary School, said fundraising is how the group pays for playground equipment, programs, festivals and other events.

They could raise $6,000 in pizza sales alone. They might have to try selling healthier food, such as fruit baskets, or items such as wrapping paper or candles. But she isn’t certain those items will make as much money.

Warren is waiting for some direction from the school board.

Joe Chiodi, assistant director of athletics at William Penn Senior High School, said he hasn’t received any guidelines about fundraising but isn’t too concerned.

Though candy is probably the biggest seller for the athletic teams and groups, he believed any cut in sales of candy or other food could be recouped by merchandise sales. The groups sell T-shirts, bleacher seats, hats and other items. Some groups have had success selling candles. A fall barbecue fundraiser also draws funds, he said.

Barb Krier, York City School Board member, said the guidelines might cause a problem with fundraising. For example, she said, teachers at Hannah Penn Middle School sell candy bars to raise money for their various activities.

At Dallastown Area School district, no decision has been made about fundraising yet, said Sue Ayres, district food service director. They haven’t discussed the issue, she said.

Eric Wolfgang, president of the Central York School Board, said guidelines for foods sold for fundraising by booster clubs, performing arts groups, PTOs and other organizations need to be the same rules as those offered in the cafeteria and vending machines - if they are to be sold during the day.

After school, students should be able to sell whatever items they want, he said.

Wolfgang said he believes schools appear to be doing a good job of offering healthy options to students, but the students are only in school six hours a day.

“This is another societal issue that is being legislated into the school system that should be handled at home,” he said.

Food and fundraising guidelines

· Items will be packaged in single-serve portions.

· Foods considered of minimal nutritional value by the U.S. Department of Agriculture won’t be available at school.

· Foods won’t be fried.

· Foods won’t contain sugar as the first ingredient.

· Foods will provide minimal to no trans-fatty acids.

Source: Pennsylvania Department of Education

Cool fundraising event from New Zealand proves you don’t have to be a traditional athlete to help your fundraising effort.

A brave group of PC gamers are set to become Sport Relief’s first-ever cyber athletes, as the team behind Future Publishing’s PCFormat magazine hold their own marathon games session to raise money for the charity.

[S]ix gamers from [Future Publishing’s PCFormat] magazine will play an epic first-to-a-thousand-kills deathmatch of the multiplayer PC first-person shooter, Quake 4. As they prepare for their challenge, the PCFormat team are appealling to games industry and media readers, to support their fundraising event. Gaming experts believe the marathon session will last anywhere between four and seven hours, which will push the PCFormat gamers to the limit.

The PCFormat Quake 4 Marathon takes place […] two days before thousands of people across the UK run a mile for Sport Relief. Sport Relief is organised by Comic Relief and the BBC and aims to raise much needed-cash to help kids leading tough lives in some of the world’s poorest countries.

Taking a breather from his training regime, deputy editor of PCFormat, Alec Meer comments: “Our usual bouts of Quake 4 last about half an hour before we’re absolutely knackered and slump off to the pub. We’re strictly lunchtime amateurs and not pro-gamers - in other words, this will completely destroy us. PCFormat wanted to do something different to raise some money for Sport Relief - we hope everybody will get behind us, supporting Sport Relief’s first cyber-athletes in the process.”

Read the full article here.

ps, “frag the n00bs” is videogame-speak for “shoot the new/weak players”

From Louisiana, eighty-five-year-old Harry Briggs swims 2 miles - in a river, not a heated pool - for fundraising. That makes the prospect of volunteering for your fundraising effort or committing to sell a few items look a lot easier, doesn’t it?

Eighty-five-year-old Harry Briggs will slip into the Red River on Thursday with two things on his mind — his wife and finishing his two-mile swim.

He created the Lydia Briggs Tennis Scholarship for the Northwestern State women’s tennis program six years ago in the memory of his wife, who was an avid tennis player.

His two-mile swim is an annual fundraising effort for the endowment bearing his wife’s name and draws attention for the program. It’s the first time he’ll perform the swim in Shreveport.

“It’s quite a challenge at age 85,” said Briggs, who is adjunct professor of political science at Northwestern’s Leesville-Fort Polk campus.

“I do have demons that enter my mind and tell me that I can’t do it. You just have to drive them out. It’s really in the mind.”

A two-mile swim is difficult even for triathletes, but for Briggs, it’s nothing compared to some of the swims from his younger days.

In 1947, he was the first person to swim across Lake Erie, completing the trip in 35 hours, 55 minutes.

Legendary writer Gay Talese wrote a profile on him for the New York Times in the early 1950s, dubbing him, “The Paddlin’ Professor.”

On his 77th birthday, he swam Tampa Bay needing 14 hours to traverse the current from Tampa to St. Petersburg.

In 1997, he was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame for his 43 marathon swims.

[…]

When it’s over, hopefully the Demons’ women’s tennis program has a few more bucks for its players and he has accomplished another goal.

“As we grow older, we lose our goals,” Briggs said. “This is a tremendous goal for me. I really want to do it.

“It’s a great feeling when you walk out of the water and know you can still do it. And, what’s two miles?”

Read the full article here.

More about the “Paddlin’ Professor” here.

From the New Jersey area, we picked up on a fundraising idea called “tricky trays”.

Sometimes called penny auctions or Chinese basket auctions, tricky trays are usually set up as fundraisers for schools, churches, animal shelters and other non-profit organizations, and they are governed by the same state guidelines that control bingo.

The basic setup is this: prizes are displayed on tables with a raffle box near each prize. People buy raffle tickets, usually in bunches, then drop any number of tickets into the box near the prize they want to win. The more tickets you stuff into a box, the better chance you have of winning.

Some tricky trays offer elaborate prizes. One held recently at the Westmount Country Club in West Paterson as a fundraiser for a West Caldwell elementary school offered a trip to Ireland, passes to Walt Disney World and a lap-top computer.

Some raffles are the culmination of sit-down dinners at banquet halls, and others are BYOS (bring your own sandwich) at American Legion halls or firehouses. Raffle ticket prices also vary depending on the swankiness of the affair. Some have a sliding scale for raffle tickets: $1 a ticket for skin care baskets or toasters, and $10 or more for vacation trips or home entertainment electronics.

[…]

The raffles aren’t just popular among fans, but are also a hit at the non-profits they benefit. Barranco said she helped organize a tricky tray auction for her son’s school in November that raised $20,000 to pay for new books and a trophy case.

Marguerite Kenney of the Caldwell College Alumni Association raised $30,000 for student scholarships at an auction in mid-June, where attendees were invited to dress as their favorite movie stars for the evening’s Hollywood theme.

The reason a non-profit can raise so much money in one night is because tricky tray gifts are usually donated — either by local businesses or the members of the non-profit putting on the auction.

Terri Kinsella of West Caldwell said it took a year and more than 50 volunteers to put on her school’s raffle — soliciting prizes, setting up the banquet hall and wrapping baskets. But the event raised nearly $40,000 for field trips, teacher supplies and other programs run by the Home School Association.

Christine Chiovaro of West Milford, who has won a big-screen TV and Disney passes at tricky trays, said the downside to the auctions becoming so popular is that they’ve taken a toll on local merchants who are asked to donate over and over. “Now every organization out there has picked up on it.”

But the fad doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.

Read the full article here.

From Redlands, California, we came across a truly down and dirty fundraising article.

New equipment for the kindergarten playground is important to Lugonia Elementary School Principal Kathy Jeide - so much so that she was willing to bribe her students to help the school get the new equipment.

Last year, she says, students helped with a school PTA fundraiser by bringing in roughly 1,000 box tops from various consumer products ranging from cereal boxes to Ziploc bag boxes. Each top is worth 10 cents when redeemed through the Box Tops For Education program sponsored by General Mills Inc.

This year, Jeide upped the ante during a school assembly. She announced to students that if each classroom brought in 300 box tops, she would eat a worm.

The students raised 9,000 - satisfying their end of the bargain to help acquire brand new tricycles for the kindergarten playground’s re-opening in the fall.

At the assembly Friday morning, she led students and staff in a flag salute outside of her office, followed by the singing of George M. Cohan’s “You’re a Grand Old Flag.”

Fifth-grader Jaselin Lopez impatiently uttered an accusation under her breath: “She’s stalling.”

Jeide admitted that she was indeed stalling, as she set out her props and ingredients with a facetious flair on a table draped with a red cloth. The table setting included a fine set of utensils, a classy water glass, a tray of meal worms and a bottle of Pepto-Bismo.

Read the full article here.