365challenge Guide
Welcome to the 365challenge
(V.5 – 25.1.11)
Dear 365challenger
Thank you for choosing to take on the 365challenge to raise money for Cancer Research UK, I really appreciate your enthusiasm and energy for this important cause.
To help you get started, and set your fund-raising off to the best possible start, I’ve outlined some important initial steps you should take, along with some tips to help you with getting sponsorship. This is not an exhaustive list, so if you think of something I’ve missed, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with more suggestions that will help other 365challengers in their fund-raising efforts.
**Click here to download this page as a PDF: Welcome to the 365challenge Jan2011 **
Important First Steps
• Tell me about yourself: name, contact address and phone number and email address. You can email me at: colin@365challenge.co.uk. Doing this lets me keep you informed of developments with the 365challenge and share news on successes by fellow 365challengers. I’ll also give you a name check on the 365challenge website.
• Register with Cancer Research UK (CRUK) as a fund-raiser – you can download their Fund-Raising Registration pack from this link: http://supportus.cancerresearchuk.org/fundraising-for-us/Get-started/. Please make sure to mention that you are taking part in the 365challenge on the form – Appeal Code UKCH01. Once registered, someone from CRUK will then get in touch to offer you additional support, including sponsorship forms and CRUK t-shirts.
• Create a Just Giving page – CRUK recommend this too, and even ask you for your Just Giving web address on their registration form. Just Giving is a simple way for people to sponsor you, and gives you a web page that you can direct people to so they can see what you are doing for CRUK. It also makes collecting your sponsorship simpler – when people sponsor you this way, the money goes directly to CRUK. Simply go to www.justgiving.com and follow the instructions to create your own fund-raising page. I’d suggest that you call you page something like “YOUR NAME’s 365challenge”, so that the 365challenge idea is presented to your potential sponsors from the moment they open your page. Take a look at my page if you like:
www.justgiving.com/365challenge.
• Set a fund-raising target for your year-long 365challenge. You can set whatever target you wish, but I’ve suggested 3 Levels you might like to consider.
• Level 1 – £365.00 (£1 a day over the year);
• Level 2 – £1000.00 (a nice, round figure); or
• Level 3 – £3650.00 (my preferred target & just £10 a day over the year)
It’s entirely up to you which Level or target you choose, but remember, you’re taking a year to try to raise the amount you choose, so maybe you can push yourself to raise more than you initially think you might – and if you select a high target, but don’t hit it, don’t worry, you’ll probably have raised more than you thought you were going to anyway and CRUK benefit even more. If you take up the idea of the 1%ers Club (see below) you’ll see that £3650 might not be as unattainable as you might first have thought …
• Set a Start Date – I’d recommend the 1st of the month that you intend starting your 365challenge, but if you have a significant date in mind instead, like a birthday or an anniversary that means something to you (and your potential sponsors), go with that.
Some Fund-Raising Tips
• Once you’re ready to start, make full use of your email address book. I suggest that you create some email groups in your address book, selecting names to be included in each group accordingly. For example, you might have a 365 Friends and Family group; a 365 Work Colleagues group; or a 365 General group (I’ve suggested the 365 prefix because, this way, all your lists will now appear at the start of your email address book and so will be more easily accessible). Then, once people start sponsoring you, I’d suggest creating a 365 Sponsors group, and transfer names into this as their sponsorship comes in. This way, you can keep your sponsors informed of your progress over the year through update emails, and you can send occasional updates and new invitations or reminders to sponsor you to the people in the other groups, encouraging them to support you.
• Write your email and save it as a draft until you’re ready to send it. I’ve created two sample emails that I have uploaded to the website that you might like to consider adapting to suit your particular plans (click here to Tell the Family: sample 1 – intro email re 365challenge – family + and Tell Everyone: sample 2 – intro email re 365challenge – general circulation)
• Your email should explain what you are doing, stressing the extreme nature of the task you are undertaking – for example, running across America; cycling the length of the country; or swimming the channel – and how you are going to achieve this using equipment in your gym or wherever, accumulating miles across the 365 days of the challenge.
• Tell people about why you have decided to take this challenge – have you a personal story relating to cancer that has motivated you or do you know someone who has been touched by cancer?
• Let people know that you are supporting the important work of Cancer Research UK (CRUK), tell them how much you are aiming to raise, and direct them to your Just Giving fund-raising page.
• In this email, help people choose how much they might sponsor you for. Obviously, people can sponsor you for as much or as little as they wish, but I found that by giving them a gentle hint, many people will be willing to be guided!
• In my emails, I explain to people that I’ve created the 1%ers club for anyone who sponsors me £36.50 (1% of my target total of £3650 – and the equivalent of just 10 pence a day for 365 days – and spell this out in your email, it’ll make people think). Sponsoring this amount allows people to become members of this exclusive club.
• Membership entitles them to member-only updates (I created an email group for my 365 1%ers) and a mention on my website (but don’t worry if you are not developing a website, just make sure you keep note of who your 1%ers are and keep them informed regularly of your efforts).
• Membership of the 1%ers Club also lets people feel that they’ve given you a significant boost in your fund-raising and taken you 1% closer to your total, so don’t forget to acknowledge this to them in a follow-up email.
• As with my sample emails, I recommend sending an email out to close friends and family first. Invite them to go to your Just Giving page and sponsor you there. Explain that you are giving them the opportunity to be some of the first names on your sponsorship list, and point out that if they can be 1%ers (at least), their early support will encourage others to maybe offer to sponsor you the same amount. Try to get your most-likely bigger sponsors on the list at the start, before you contact people generally. This means that when you send out your general circulation email and people look at your Just Giving page, they won’t be put off about being the first person to put their name down, and they’ll have some idea of the average amount that people are sponsoring you.
• After you’ve got a few sponsors on your Just Giving page, it’s time to send out your email to everyone else on your lists. You might want to edit it slightly to the email you sent to family and friends, but the general message can be the same.
• I’d recommend that when you send out these emails, you put your own email address in the ‘To’ part of the address bar, and put everyone else’s addresses or the group lists into the ‘BCC’ part of the address bar (BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy, so the email is ‘copied’ to everyone in this section of the address bar, but their email addresses are not visible to everyone who gets the email, so maintaining their privacy).
• Follow-up your initial email after a couple of weeks, especially to those who haven’t yet responded. Not everyone will sponsor you, of course, but periodic reminders will catch those people who have been meaning to get around to it.
• If possible, send reminder emails towards the end of the month, when people have been paid, and may feel more able to commit some funds to your cause.
• Other key times to send emails are in the days just before you start your 365challenge, letting them know that you’re about to launch into this year-long effort, and at milestones along the way, for example, when you’ve completed your first 100 miles of the total distance, or at the half-way point and most certainly as you are coming into the home straight and have either only a few miles to go, or have just completed your 365challenge.
• Send out regular update emails to your sponsors and to your general mailing list too.
• Monthly updates to your sponsors can keep them informed and show them how you are getting on with the 365challenge and that you are earning their support, as well as telling them how your fund-raising is going.
• Sending emails to the people who haven’t yet sponsored you will keep your 365challenge in their minds, and some will come on board and sponsor you over time. But don’t overdo it with your reminders – you don’t want to be seen as just another spam email, so maybe offer that you will take people off your email circulation list if they get in touch to ask to be removed. Most won’t, but this way, you show that you are being considerate, and people will appreciate that.
• If you have a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn profile – or any other similar social networking profile – why not make use of this? Include details of what you’re undertaking, and invite people to support you or take part alongside you. (For information, I have created a Facebook group – 365challenge for Cancer Research UK – that you might like to join. I hope to use this to keep in touch with 365challenge supporters or generate discussions of various activities that 365challengers are undertaking).
• On Facebook, you could create “an Event” and invite your friends to be a part of your fund-raising challenge.
• You might actually want to create a get-together, so people can come along and donate on the day of your launch or similar.
• Follow the same practice of regular update messages to everyone in your circulation list outlined above. People who don’t immediately sponsor you will possibly take the opportunity later if you remind them.
• Create a web page to promote your 365challenge – details of how to do that as part of this site are coming soon.
• Create a blog to record your efforts in an on-line diary. Google or WordPress offer great free blog services. Again, let your mailing list know about this, and they can drop in to see how you are progressing. Check out my 365’er blog on this sire, or earlier versions of it at: http://365ersnewchallenge.blogspot.com/ or http://365challenge.blogspot.com/.
• Many employers now run schemes whereby they agree to match, pound for pound, the amount that you raise in sponsorship. So, if you complete your 365challenge with sponsorship of, say, £1000, it might just be possible that your employer will match this amount, and you’ll have magically doubled your contribution to Cancer Research UK. How motivating could that be? Find out where your employer stands on Matched Giving, and if they participate in this scheme, make sure you let them know what you’re up to and, crucially, how much you’ve raised!
That’s it for now. Follow these ideas, and I am sure you’ll get the support that you deserve for your efforts. Please get in touch with questions, suggestions and success stories, and I’ll include these on the 365challenge website.
Take care, have fun with it. Please don’t take on something that you’re not able for. If you’re not sure of your fitness level, speak to your GP about what you are proposing and make sure that you’re not going to cause yourself any harm!
**365challenge cannot be held responsible for any injuries you might incur as you take your challenges so be sensible from the start to ensure that you will finish healthier than you began.**
Thank you for supporting 365challenge and Cancer Research UK.
All the best
Colin
colin@365challenge.co.uk
25 January 2011
