Eh, Friday night, who needs it?

That's right, it is 10:49 on Friday night and I am sitting here thinking about my Team In Training fundraising. What kind of terrible 23 year old am I? And even worse, I am subjecting poor Taylor to my lameness by promising him a back rub if he doesn't bother me while I write a blog!!

Oh, good times! Well, I just wanted to provide an update on my FUNDRAISING for the Marathon. You may recall, I need to raise $4,000 by February 14, 2007 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I am extremely excited about BOTH my training and my fundraising. The reason that I am so excited is: I know I can count on all of you to support not just me, but all of the people we know who have or have had cancer of any kind. The money that people give to my campaign goes directly to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's life-saving research and patient aid campaigns.

Anyway, what I really want to do now is tell you HOW exactly I plan to raise $4,000 so that you have some context when you hear from me (and I promise you will, probably many times).

My fundraising campaign will have two initial thrusts:
1.) Letters
2.) E-mail

To support both of these initiatives, I have created a spreadsheet with everyone I think will donate to my campaign. For each person, I have listed a goal of the amount of money that I hope they will give to my campaign. I added people and increased my goals until I reached $4,000. The spreadsheet includes e-mail and snail mail addresses for everyone for whom I have them, and it will be my key tool for informing and tracking my fundraising efforts.

I will be mailing my hard-copy letters on Monday, December 11 and posting the letter to this blog the same day. I spent a lot of time writing my letter and I hope you will take the time to read it and consider how much you can donate to my campaign. I also hope that you will send me the names of the people in your life who have had cancer so that I can run in their honor as well.

Next, I will e-mail everyone on my list for whom I have e-mail addresses. These e-mails will include links to my blog and my donation page.

After my initial communications, I will periodically track my donations and will follow up with people to encourage them to give (I say "them" because I assume if you are reading, you have given!!).

Hopefully this gives you some context for when you begin to hear from me. I will be updating and increasing my fundraising efforts as needed to reach my goal, so please check back to see my progress!

My biggest hope is that everyone who hears from me will realize how importance this cause is and will be glad for the chance to join me in such an amazing adventure. Please feel free to e-mail me and give me encouragement or feedback, I would love to hear it.

Oh, and good news, I GOT MY FIRST DONATION TODAY!! A big thank you to Wayne who has promised to donate $25 to my campaign now and $25 more dollars if I run 9:25 miles and finish the race in 4 hours and 5 minutes. What a great challenge! Thank you, Wayne for your support, now click "Donate Now" and pony up (just kidding!!!).

As always, you can donate now by clicking the link at the top on the left. Thank you for reading this far. I promise some more media in the coming weeks!