Recently in Fundraising 08 Category

Well, I have now met my fundraising goal for my half-marathon on October 18, so I owe a huge thank you to everyone that donated.  Meeting my goal, however, does not mean that I will stop taking donations, so if you still want to give, I'd be very excited to see how much the goal can be exceeded.

I just thought I'd pass along a bit of information about the donation that put me over the top ($150!!).  This donation came from a neighbor of my parents, who live a bit north of Houston, TX.  I have never met this person, though I've no doubt that she's gotten an earful about me and my siblings.  :)  Anyway, she was recently diagnosed with cancer and has been undergoing treatment for a little while now.  It's really early in the game, so I'm not sure if anyone knows how effective the treatment has been so far.  All I know is that it has (obviously), been really hard on her, her husband, and the rest of her family.

My parents have been really awesome helping them out when they can, and from what I understand they at some point bought some stuff for her to have in the hospital.  When they tried to pay my parents back, my mom directed them to my fundraising page.  My mom said that a $25 donation should more than cover it.  Well, she certainly more than covered it.  I suppose this is her way of saying thank you to my folks, but I definitely owe her a big thank you as well.

So, if you could, I know she'd appreciate all the prayer she can get as she battles this cancer.  I do have her name, but as she did not post her name on the fundraising page, I don't know that I should necessarily post it here.  I'm sure if you pray for "Andy's Parent's Neighbor," God will know who you are talking about.

Again, thanks to everyone, and lets keep her in our prayers.

I've just gone passed 2/3 of the way there with $335 dollars donated.  That's only $165 more to go!  Unfortunately, I'm quickly running out of people to hit up for donations.  My latest attempt was an email to my mom's multiple brothers and sisters with the promise that the largest donation gets the title of "My Favorite Aunt/Uncle."  Together, they've brought in $100, with my Aunt Mary currently holding the title.  :)

We're now at $190, so quickly closing in on the halfway point!  I just wanted to let everyone know that I've gotten a little shout out from the FirstGiving blog.  Their post also got me thinking about this ridiculously huge bailout the government is currently considering (and very carefully, let us hope), and maybe we could think of this as sort of a mini bailout for those who really need it.  Let's keep up the good work.

Well, within 24 hours, $115 dollars have already been donated to Harvesters, so I'm really excited.  It's amazing what can be done with technology.  I can set up the donation page, let all my facebook and blogging friends know, other people email those that they know and several hundreds of people have the ability to participate in this drive.  Now just to get 'em to donate $5 each and we're set.  :)  Seriously, though, I'm already impressed by the people that have stepped up and donated and even passed this along to people I don't know at all.  Let's keep the momentum going!

Well, I'm out to prove that good things do happen after midnight, if only on rare occasions.  For my last post, I spent some time on the Homeless World Cup website, and I noticed that they have a way to do raise money for them online.  So I started searching some of my favorite charities in the KC area to see if they offered similar programs.  Unfortunately, none of them did directly, but I did come across a website called Firstgiving, where you can set up a website to raise funds for any number of charities.  So I am.

As many of you already know, I'm planning on running in the KC Half-Marathon this coming October 18th.  While this race does donate a good chunk of the proceeds to a couple of charities, I've decided to do my own fund raising for Harvesters, Kansas City's only food bank.  With the recent economic downturn, more people are turning toward different charities for food, while fewer people are donating.  I've seen more than a few local news stories about places running out of food, so I thought this would be a good charity to support.

A bit more about Harvesters:

Harvesters mission is to collect food and household products from community and industry sources and distribute those products through a network of non-profit agencies. Harvesters is an essential partner with over 550 charitable agencies throughout our 13-county service area in Greater Kansas City. These agencies include emergency food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, day care centers and senior centers. Together we feed the weakest and most vulnerable members in our community - the sick, the elderly and the very young. Our mission doesn't end with the collection and distribution of food. We believe that a long-term solution to hunger involves leadership and outreach programs to increase community awareness of hunger and generate solutions to end hunger.

For now, I've set a goal of raising $500, mostly because I have no idea what would be an appropriate goal.  I have less than a month until the race, but hopefully I'll be revising that figure sharply upward shortly.  :)

To make a donation, simply visit my donation page at http://www.firstgiving.com/andylee or click the link of the right side of this post.  Thanks!