The AIDS Walk was 9 days ago, but it was so sureal that it's taken me this long to put my thoughts together. It was a rollercoaster, but turned out great. Now, I'm really excited for next year and starting to plan already. Mark you calendars: 10/06/06!When I took the job at PPF, I was asked to be on 2 committees. Through a series of unfortunate events, we lost 3 key staff, and 3 people who were supposed to be running the thing. I stepped up to run the event since we had no one better. Even though I've never run a major event or been to the walk, I was still the most qualified person in the room. That should tell you a lot.
It's really easy to pull of the basics. We had (meager) files from past years plus some institutional memory to help out. The key was using the one major technique I learned at PIRG. You guessed it, phone banking. I put together a list of past sponsors and then called them until I reached them. This yielded $29,000 in sponsorship - half of what we raised on the entire walk in 04. Then I put together a list of past walkers and called them. Nearly 600 people agreed to walk and we got about 400 to show up. With the grassroots fundraising we did, plus the board pitching in we raised close to $125,000 (so far). Last year we raised half of that.
Next year is going to be great!
2 comments:
Congratulations, Jodi! I cannot even imagine having to mobilize support for something so large. It sounds like you did a fantastic job for a very worthwhile and necessary cause!
Thanks Glenn! I'm still shocked by what a big event it was. A lot of it happened all by itself - people who have participated in years will just show up. It was pretty amazing to see and I was choked up with tears in my eyes several times that day.
Thanks for commenting!
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