Proven Tips for Successful Fundraising

The Blue Planet Run team wants to make it easy for you to ask your friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues to sponsor you in the upcoming Blue Planet Run 24 trail relay race. We want you to be SUCCESSFUL well beyond your goals! The more you succeed, the more we all succeed in ending the global water crisis and bringing safe drinking water to every man, woman and child around the world. Whether you are directly fundraising for Blue Planet Run water projects or if you are drumming up sponsorship to help with your registration fees, we have lots of ideas for you.
So let’s get going!

WHAT ABOUT YOU?
The best way to get people to sponsor you is to get them to believe in you and the cause. There are so many worthy causes to donate to every day. People need to know that you are TRULY passionate about solving the water crisis and want to do whatever you can to help.

• Tell people why YOU are committed to the cause.
• Tell them if you’ve raised money for water before.
• Tell them how you feel when you’re doing this.
• Lead them to www.blueplanetrun.org to learn more about the crisis.

The common reaction of people when they are told the facts of the global water crisis is: “I had NO idea!” followed by “Oh, what can I do to help?”

FUNDRAISING IDEAS

• Send an email/letter to everyone you know! We’ve drafted a letter you can use. Make your letter as personal as possible. Click here to download a Word doc with a generic letter that you can customize and personalize. When people see that your cause is legitimate and that you’re asking for something very reasonable, it will be easy for them to say yes.
* Remember to follow up with a second note a month before your race and a phone call to anyone you know well, reminding them of the worthy cause and how valuable their contribution will be.

• Add a sign off to your email signature: "I'm running to bring safe drinking water to the world. Please support me at (insert the URL for your fundraising page).

• Pitch your community pages. Write about the Blue Planet Run 24 Series on your Facebook, MySpace or other online community areas. Tell people about your run and include a link to your fundraising page. You might get total strangers donating to your team once they find out what you’re doing.

• Sponsor a lap. Ask people to sponsor you and/or your team for every lap you do of the trail relay event.

• Local business sponsorship: Ask local merchants to sponsor you as they would a local Little League or AYSO team. Make a flyer and ask merchants' permission to put it in windows or on community boards.

• Hold an extraordinary fundraiser: a wine tasting, an Indian curry supper, a dance party! Invite people to your birthday, anniversary, etc. party and ask them to donate to your race instead of bringing a present. Or stick to the classics… car wash, bake sale or lemonade stand!

• Offer to do chores: baby sit, run errands, tutor, garden, organize…there is always too much to do and not enough time. This arrangement helps others AND helps your sponsors.

• Use your unique talents to help people in return for a donation. Do calligraphy on invitations, teach people how to train for running races, direct an elementary school musical production, deliver weekly home made meals…whatever you’re good at, someone else wants to learn how to do.

• Collect neighborhood or school recycling items and collect the redemption amount.

• Employer Sponsorships: Ask friends and family to speak with their employers about sponsoring your team. Corporations often look to give back to their communities and sponsoring your team is a great way for them to “do good” and “feel good”. You also should be able to get larger donations this way. If they would like to sponsor the overall Blue Planet Run 24 series, please have them contact Lisa Nash at lisa@blueplanetrun.org.

• Volunteers: In addition, if you are running at a Blue Planet Run 24 event near your home town, ask local merchants and corporations to organize volunteers to come out and help at the event. The more volunteers, the more money can go to water projects! Please direct them to Nessa Ship at nessa@blueplanetrun.org.

Knowing the facts about water and our organization will help you pitch the cause!

WATER FACTS
• Lack of access to safe drinking water is the leading cause of disease and death in the world.
• One-in-six people on this planet lacks access to safe drinking water. (over 1.2 billion people).
• Some 6,000 children die every day from disease associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene – equivalent to 20 jumbo jets crashing every day.
• Many women and children spend up to 6 hours a day fetching water.
• Poor families in developing countries spend up to a quarter of their income to purchase water, often at a significantly higher price than piped water.
• Half of the world’s hospital beds are filled due to water related illnesses.

BLUE PLANET RUN® FOUNDATION

• The Blue Planet Run Foundation is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization dedicated to raising global
awareness about the need for safe drinking water and funding working solutions today for the billion plus people living without safe water. The U.S.-based foundation connects nongovernmental organizations worldwide with funding and promotes operational sustainability. The Foundation currently is funding 142 water projects in 14 countries around the world.

• Blue Planet Run 24 is a unique trail relay series featuring soloists and teams of up to10 runners continuously traversing five mile loops in a 24-hour relay race. In addition to the 24-hour relay, each event will feature six-hour and 12-hour relay categories, as well as a five-mile trail run on Saturday mornings. Between segments, runners can join friends, family and members of the community at the Blue Planet Run 24 Village – a festival atmosphere where attendees can learn more about the global water issue while enjoying food, drink and live entertainment.

• The first run in the Blue Planet Run 24 series will be held at Asheville, NC’s Camp Rockmont on May 3 and 4. Dates for races in Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, New England, Northern California and the Pacific Northwest will be announced later this year.

• The Blue Planet Run 24 series is a continuation of BPRF’s first relay race and fundraising event, the Blue Planet Run. Beginning at the United Nations in New York City on June 1, 2007, 20 Blue Planet Run team members, and two alternates who joined the journey along the way, ran relay-style 24 hours a day, seven days a week across Europe, Russia, Asia, Canada and the United States. The runners endured some of the world’s toughest conditions, from swatting flies through the Gobi Desert to navigating city streets in Beijing to coping with the blistering summer heat of America’s heartland. The epic 95-day, 15,200-mile, 16 country expedition ended back in New York City on September 4. All of the funds raised were directed toward safe drinking water projects.