I’ve now met 10% of my Avon Walk goal. My overall goal is $1800, and I’m at $180 right now. Our team goal, with 6 members, is $10,800.00 (wow!) and we’ve raised $650.00 of that. Of course, I wouldn’t be sharing all of these facts and figures without asking you to consider making a donation to me! We need every bit of help, and while I can’t help you on this year’s tax return, your donation is tax deductible for next year.
Our next group event (for our Florida team members) will be at a local grocery store on 4/19. Traditionally, a few hours out in front of the grocery store nets us at least $500, so I’m hoping we can see that success again. It will make a big dent in my goal. My sister also committed to a $200 donation, since she’s not walking this year. I look forward to that being deposited!
Our garage sale for the Avon Walk this weekend was a big success!
I walked away with $100 in profit, and my friend ended up with over $200. We were busy all day and got rid of a ton of stuff, and even snagged a few donations from benevolent shoppers. When all was said and done, I packed up what I had left and hauled it to Goodwill where I made a big donation.
Our next fund raiser will be a stand out and beg day in front of a local grocery store. That’s always good for big donations!
I’ve put an ad in the newspaper, which appeared today and will run again tomorrow. I also got some free press in the community section, since the sale is for charity. They put “Avon Walk for Breast Cancer Charity Yard Sale” along with the address and times. Gotta love free press! Our signs are purchased, and everything is priced.
Tomorrow morning I plan to be at the neighbor’s at 7am, so we can set up. I put that the sale would start at 9am, but people ALWAYS come early to garage sales, so we want to be prepared. Once we get set up, I’ll head out to put up the signs, or send her husband to do it if we already have shoppers.
I need to get change and singles and take all of the grocery store bags I’ve been hoarding to her house tomorrow. I need to make a new sign for our donation bucket to entice people to donate even if they don’t buy. Other than that, I think we’re ready!
My post on Why I Walk was recently selected as a finalist in the Blog Battle Royale Charity edition over at Izea. Advertisers who have previously run charity campaigns will be reading the 3 finalist’s entries (one of the finalist’s is my sister!) and picking their favorite. The prize is $1000 donated to your charity. My fund raising goal for the Avon walk this year is $1800, so you can see why I’m trying to win – that donation would be a huge boost for my goal!
Our garage sale to raise money for the Avon walk is next weekend. This weekend, I had planned to organize my own items, price things, and make my way to the neighbors house to drop off my sale items. I had also planned to go to WalMart and buy the signs we needed for the morning of the sale. Then my son got sick, and I spent the day at the urgent care clinic and filling prescriptions, and I didn’t get one single thing done as far as the yard sale. Oops!
On the donation front, I had two coworkers donate to me this week, so I’m no longer sitting at $0 for my grand total. Slowly, but surely, I’ll make it to $1800.
We’ve got our first group fund raising (is it fund raising, or fundraising?) event set for April. Now, I hope some of the group can assist me that day, or it’ll be me and Catherine collecting all of the cash for my own account. If you’ve got money to raise, give your local grocery store a call – most will allow to stand out front and solicit donations if you can prove you’re collecting for a real charity. We’ve got a whole system – I’ve got a card table, chairs, and a pink table cloth I bring. We’ve got a poster that briefly explains who we are and what we’re doing, and we’ve got big industrial sized mayo containers (plastic) with handles to collect the cash. We’ve been using the same supplies for 3 years and it makes getting ready for these events super easy.
For the past 2 1/2 years, I’ve been very involved with raising money for breast cancer charities. In 2006, I participated in the Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk in Philadelphia, walking 60 miles over the course of 3 days around the city of Brotherly Love. In 2007, I repeated the walk, this time in the Tampa Bay area. And this year, I’m walking for 2 days in New York City for the Avon Foundation.
These walks are a huge commitment for someone like me – I have a husband, three children, two dogs, a full time job, and I attend college. I not only spend a single weekend in the fall walking for 2 or 3 days, but I spend countless days in the time leading up to the events, fundraising, helping my team members, and training for the miles ahead. Next month alone I’ve got a charity yard sale to organize and two days in front of the grocery store for fundraising to schedule. I need to draft press releases to send to the newspaper. I need to train and motivate my team, and help them to raise money, as many who are walking with me are doing this for the first time. For the past two years, I have raised over $2000 for each of my events, which has been pooled with the money of the other walkers to make a huge contribution to breast cancer research, education, screening and treatment.
This blog has been a huge vehicle in my fundraising efforts. I began it in early 2006 as a way for my Philadelphia team to connect and share experiences, since we were so spread out (Florida, Michigan, and Maryland), but I kept blogging even after the 2006 walk. Last year, readers of my blog not only helped me to meet MY fundraising goal of $2200, they assisted my sister as well. It was right about the time when her mother had been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, and my sister devoted all of her time to her mom. She was unable to fundraise for herself, so I took it upon myself to use this blog to raise over $700 for her account, and she was able to walk in 2007 thanks to your donations. It still blows my mind to think of all of YOU donating over $1200 to our breast cancer walks last year, because of this blog – THANK YOU!
It would be easy to say I’m too busy for something like this. And I am busy – with school, little league for my son, the parties and camps my daughters attend, the blogging I’ve committed to doing…but that would also be an excuse. As a healthy 31 year old woman, with two healthy breasts, I feel that it’s my duty to do this, and it’s a duty I happily accept. Maybe I feel a bit closer to the cause, because breast cancer has affected my family (which is the reason I began getting mammograms last year!) but breast cancer also affects women (and men!) who NO family history of cancer. If I had breast cancer, who would walk for me? Would you? I hope that you would!
When a women gets breast cancer, it affects everyone around her. Her husband is left wondering if he will find himself without a partner if his wife’s cancer can’t be cured. Her children wonder if their mom will be alright, or when Mommy will feel better. Her friends and coworkers resolve to do their monthly breast exams, and get mammograms on a regular basis. And of course, the patient herself makes a huge commitment to her healing. She gets sick from chemo, her hair falls out, and she may even lose her breasts.
That’s what I think about when I’m walking, and it’s hot, and humid, and my feet hurt, and my shin splints are aching. I think about that woman, scared, and nervous, and fighting for her life to stop this disease. She keeps fighting…and so I keep walking. We have a saying on the walk, that nothing is as tough as cancer. It’s easy to feel down and out when you’ve walked 17 miles that day, and you feel as though you can’t take another single step. But when I think of that woman fighting cancer…I know that I can take as many steps as are needed to STOP BREAST CANCER. I want to FIND A CURE, and walking is my way of doing so.
Why do I walk? I walk for those who can not. I walk for survivors, I walk for those who have lost their battles with breast cancer. I walk so that when my daughters are older, breast cancer has been cured. I walk so that the hundreds of thousands of people affected by breast cancer can have hope. I walk so that we won’t lose another mother, sister, aunt, or daughter from this disease.
It all starts by tying on your shoes and taking a single step.
The date for my 2008 charity garage sale has been set, and it’s less than a month away!
Last year, I did the whole thing on my own, at my house. This year, I’m teaming up with a friend and fellow walker to share the work. She’s got a garage full of stuff to price and sell from a recent move, so I’m hoping that our efforts allow her to really give her fundraising a boost.
The sale will be on Saturday, March 15th, so I’ve got only a short amount of time to draft the press releases and get the ad copy for the classifieds. Since all of our profits are donated to charity, getting this into the newspaper as news or a community event shouldn’t be a problem. I simply need to write up all of the details and email it to the appropriate people – doing it got us a ton of traffic last year!
If you’re in the Tampa area and would like to donate clean, workable items to our sale, let me know! We also happily accept cash – and you can donate online!
Fundraising has been slow going for the Avon walk this October. I’ve had so much going on (work, school, the kids, sports) that there hasn’t been much time to plan anything. I’m making headway on a date for the charity garage sale I’m holding, and then will plan my days at the grocery store once that date is set.
In the meantime, I’m participating in a different charity walk next month. You may recall that last year I did a walk with my sisters, my kids, and my nieces for a pancreatic cancer charity. My sister’s mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year, and she passed away this week. The walk is in Tampa next month on Davis Island, and my sisters asked friends and family to contribute to the charity instead of sending flowers to the memorial service. You can donate too! Just click here to visit our team page – we’re called Lynda’s Hope – and make a donation to my sister, or to me.
My neighbor who is walking with me in this year’s walk (October, in New York City) emailed me earlier this week and asked when we’d start training. I think I already did! Jim and I were in Amsterdam, The Netherlands last week, and we walked ALL over the city for 5 days straight. We took a cab once, from the airport to our hotel, and we took a streetcar tram once, when it was raining. Aside from that, we walked EVERYWHERE, easily 5 miles a day.
