The Fear in the Fundraising

There are a lot of scary things in life. I’m currently binge-watching Bones on Netflix while I go about certain solitary tasks around my house like folding laundry and doing the dishes (and adding the photos to this blog post…). The fictional scenarios in that show can be very scary. Perhaps relatedly, a noise from my dryer made me scream a few weeks ago when I was the only person awake in the dead of the night. While those frights from bumps in the night and murder-mystery televisions shows may be irrational, they feel no less real. Many other fears are a little more reasonable however. Life can be really scary when there are big decisions to be made or when money is extremely tight or when disease starts to steal away health. There is a lot to fear as we go about our daily human existences.

I have had a face a couple of fears lately. While training to run a half marathon, I had to face the coming reality of making my body move for 21.1 kilometres. I had to realize that if I did it too slowly, I might be swept off the course, not allowing me to finish the race or come home with a fabulous medal. I had to consider the exhaustion and the injuries and the bad weather that I could (and would) face while training and running. Committing to run long distances can definitely be considered one of those scarier things in life.

Honestly though, running was the least of my fears. Signing up to run a half marathon with Team in Training meant that I could go on a cool trip and run a cool race, but it also meant that I committed to fundraising too. I knew I could run races. I knew I could push through and train. I didn’t know if I could raise money. It is intimidating asking people for money, no matter how worthy the cause is.

Just like it was possible for me to train hard enough to get to the Walt Disney World Half Marathon finish line without being swept off the course or dying, it is also possible to fundraise. In fact, it is even possible to raise more than the minimum that Team in Training requires. Lots of participants have done so. Lots of participants have come back to do it again.

Meagan was one of the girls that I went to Disney with. I met her through Team in Training, and she was so awesome at fundraising that she raised the most money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada out of anyone in our group. Because she rocked at it so hard, I asked her how she felt about fundraising at the beginning of her Team in Training journey:

I fundraised though setting up my own website with TNT and asking for personal donations from friends, family and co-workers. I did a lot of advertising of my TNT page through frequent Facebook status updates. I had a few bake sales which generated some good revenue. Natalie and I dressed up silly one Friday night and hit downtown Halifax as change bandits and made a killing. The most lucrative event we had was a silent auction at Gus’s pub. We phoned and emailed many business to collect donations then told all our friends about the night we planned. We had a fab turn out. A friend of mine and her band performed live music. We had a 50/50 and a raffle holiday gift basket. That was a great night :) 

I followed Suzi‘s journey with Team in Training shortly before I started my own journey. She’s a blogger, so her methods of fundraising, many of which were online, were really intriguing to me. She ran the San Francisco Nike Women’s Half Marathon with Team in Training in October 2013, and we both have plans to run another race with Team in Training, this time together. Here is how Suzi experienced fundraising:

When I first signed up to run with Team in Training, I was slightly petrified about the fundraising. I’ve never tried to raise so much money is such a short period of time. I knew it would be hard but also that it would feel amazing if I was able to do it!

To raise the money, I held virtual 5Ks, a Zumba Master Class, made and sold all sorts of food items, bracelets, headbands, and hair ties. I offered my online training at a discounted rate and allowed new clients to donate their sign-up fee directly to my fundraising page, and of course I asked friends and family for donations. My Zumba Master Class definitely brought in the most money, though I have the advantage of being an instructor so I didn’t have to find someone to donate their time to teach the class. I raised about $700-$800 with that event alone.

Now that I have finished fundraising, I have to say, it is flipping hard! I mean, I knew that before, but I didn’t know there would be so many sleepless nights and constant thinking! The day after I met my goal I was amazed at how much more free time I had now that I didn’t have to spend every waking second trying to figure out how to raise all that money! But, here’s the thing. I absolutely will run another race with Team in Training. When I do so, I plan to start setting aside the proceeds from selling things I make early so that I will hopefully have a large percentage of the goal achieved before even signing up.

Fundraising isn’t easy. It might even be scary. It might even be scarier than running a long distance that you’ve never run before. But that’s the cool thing about Team in Training. They help you achieve goals that you never thought possible. And in the end, the accomplishment is worth every step and every penny.

You know what is scarier than fundraising? Cancer. In that light, fundraising doesn’t seem so scary. Fundraising even seems, dare I say it? Doable.

If you live near Nova Scotia and have been thinking about participating in Team in Training but are intimidated by the fundraising commitment or the idea of running, I urge you to check out Team in Training‘s new program: Moms in Training – an 8 week program to run a local 5K women’s race with a low fundraising commitment. No matter what your fear is – running, fundraising, meeting new people – you can overcome that and surprise yourself.