Walk of Hope Fundraising

Fundraising!

Each participant is encouraged to raise funds to support RESOLVE. (Fundraising is not a requirement to participate in the walk.) For every $50 raised, participants will receive an additional ticket to enter into the prize drawings. Remember, virtual walkers count toward your fundraising goal! Click here for more information. Prizes include:

• Roundtrip airfare for two courtesy of AirTran Airways
• More coming soon!

Please use the sample letter below as a fundraising tool. Make sure to personalize it with information about your journey, team name, fundraising goal, pictures, etc.

Sample Fundraising Letter

Other Fundraising Ideas:

In addition to asking for sponsorships, here are some fundraising ideas. Be sure to enter your donations online or bring them with you to the Walk to receive credit and get your additional prize tickets.

• Corporate Matching: Take advantage of corporate matching gifts programs.
• Corporate Sponsor Shirt:  Identify one corporate sponsor that you can ask for a large donation. Offer to wear their shirt during the event.
• Waiter/waitress: Ask the waiter/waitress or bartender at your favorite hangout to donate a day’s tips.
• “Change” the Face of Infertility: Ask your favorite restaurant or local pub to put out a jar for donations of spare change.  Be sure to decorate it first.
• Birthday/House-Warming/Wedding/Retirement Gifts: In lieu of a gift for a special occasion, ask your friends and family to make a donation.
• Cut-a-thon: Ask your hair stylist/salon to host a hair-cut-a-thon in the salon.
• “Sit” for Donations: Baby-sit, pet-sit, house-sit. Offer services to the neighbors to get them involved.
• National Holidays: Don’t forget about Labor Day weekend and all of those picnics. Bring a donation jar and ask everyone in attendance to donate.
• Coins: Go to your local mall or shopping center and ask what they do with the coins in the fountain.
• Check-Out Donation: Make up Walk of Hope donation cards for your desk at work. Co-workers can sign their name or purchase the card in someone else’s honor. Hang the donation cards around your office in recognition to those that have donated.
• Donation location at work or other highly visible location: Set up a table in front of your local grocery store. Get permission first, and then ask everyone who enters to support you. While this doesn’t sound very glamorous, it’s very effective. Remember that in addition to raising much-needed funds, you are also playing an important role in raising awareness.
• Walk in Public: Set up a treadmill outside of a store and walk for donations. Set out a donation can for people to drop donations in.
• Lemonade, anyone?: Have a yard sale with a lemonade stand, or just a lemonade stand. This is a great way to get your kids or neighbors involved.
• Benefit night at a local restaurant: Check in with your favorite local hangouts. Many restaurants
  already have programs in place to help you fundraise at their establishment. Be a guest bartender? A guest griller? Or hand out coupons to their establishment for a percentage of profits for that evening.
• Garage Sale: Ask all of your friends and neighbors to participate by donating items for sale. Make signs that indicate all proceeds are going to your local Walk of Hope event. Ask your local paper to run an ad as their contribution. Add a bake sale and/or lemonade stand, and have a straight donation jar visibly displayed. Don’t forget to have plenty of donation forms on hand!
• Super Change Jar: Ask all of your friends and family to put aside their spare change to be added to the super change jar. Every month or so, empty it out and let everyone know how much “a little at a time” adds up!
• Car Wash: Hold a car wash — either in your neighborhood, at your place of worship, or at your place of business. Ask local businesses to donate the supplies you will need and ask your friends to help wash.
• House Party: Host a fundraising party at your home for friends, family, co-workers, neighbors. Share your experience of infertility and your reasons for walking; then ask them to support you.
• Movie Party: Host a movie party at your house. Every time the word “walk” is said in the movie, everyone antes up $1 in a donation bowl. Have pizza donated and charge at the door.
• Theme Dinner: Hold a theme dinner party for at least 10 of your friends with a donation of $50 a person. Spend just $20 per person on food and you’ve raised $300 in donations. Better yet, have all of the food donated!
• Gala Night: Host an elegant or formal party and charge $75 a person. Have food and beverages donated.
• Host a coffee get-together at your home or at a local coffee shop: Ask your favorite coffee shop to donate the coffee (and maybe even some goodies!). Invite your neighbors and friends. Let them know they will have a chance to pay tribute to someone affected by infertility by signing your shirt. Suggest a donation of $10 (or more!). Get creative and have them sign orange ribbons to be attached to your shirt, or pink buttons, etc. You’ll have the coolest shirt on walk day!
• TV Show Party: Host a party in celebration of the premiere or finale of a favorite TV show. Serve donated hors d’oeuvres and drinks. Charge at the door. Or, ask a local bar that has a big-screen television to allow you to have the party there and donate a portion of the food and beverage sales.
• Movie/TV Marathon: Host a movie or TV series marathon. Choose a theme (Hitchcock, I Love Lucy, Gilligan’s Island, Seinfeld) and start the popcorn! Charge at the door. Enhance the theme with a suggested $1 donation every time a specific word or phrase is spoken, every time Hitchcock himself appears, or every time Jerry has an “aside” with Elaine.
• Game Night: Host a game night — Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, Poker, Bridge, Bingo. Serve donated food and drinks. Charge at the door.
• Sweets Party: Have a dessert auction at work! Ask local restaurants, bakeries and grocery stores to donate yummy desserts. Post signs at work well in advance and then bring all of the desserts in to work on Friday.
• Tea Party: Host a traditional High Tea, or ask a local hotel to do so on your behalf. Charge at the door.
• Special Screening: Ask your local movie theatre to donate a special screening of a new release.  Invite everyone you know and make flyers to get the word out. Charge at the door. Ask if the theatre will also donate a percentage of the concession sales for your event!
• “Fill-in-the-blank for families:" Host a fun event using a creative name to catch attention. Who couldn't resist attending Fishing for Families?
• Poker Tournament Party: Set up some tables and snacks and let the bluffing begin. Charge a fee to join the tournament and winner takes the rest or donates a portion to the “house.” Make it an annual event.
• Pancake Breakfast: Host a pancake breakfast at a school, park or place of worship. Charge a fee. Get the pancake mix and other food items donated by local stores. Make it an annual event.
• Bowling Party: Ask your local bowling alley to donate some lanes for a fundraising party. Invite your office-mates as a team-building experience, your neighbors, your family or a group of old friends. Charge at the door.
• “Loose Change Day:” Ask your child’s school to have a “Loose Change Day.” Make a flyer encouraging each child to bring in loose change from their house to be donated. Encourage the math classes to assist with counting, predicting and rolling the change. This is a great way to involve the entire school. You can hold this event multiple times; every week or every month.
• Dress Down Friday: Ask your boss if you can host a “Dress Down Friday.” Employees buy an orange ribbon and get to dress down on an assigned day.
• Email: Email your fundraising letter to friends, family and coworkers and ask them to support you. Your email will have a direct link right back to the Walk of Hope website and when they donate online, they will automatically receive a receipt for tax purposes. Ask everyone to forward on your email to 10 more people!
• Signing Your Correspondence: Get in the habit of signing your correspondence with your name followed by a link to the donation page for the walk. You’ll be surprised by how many people will ask you what it means.
• Button: Make a Save the Date button and wear it around town. Ask for a $1 or 50 cent donation from everyone that asks you about your button or about the Walk of Hope event.
• Speak at a place of worship: Ask your local place of worship if you can speak to their congregation about the Walk of Hope and your commitment after a service. Set up a table to collect donations afterwards.
• Actors: Ask your thespian-oriented friends to improvise for a “play party.” Invite all of your friends; serve hors d’oeuvres and charge at the door.
• Ask your yoga instructor or personal trainer for a donated class: Invite your friends to attend a special yoga/aerobics/step class donated by a trainer. Their admission fee of $20 payable to the Walk of Hope becomes a donation, and the trainer gets the chance to build their client base. It’s a win-win for all.
• Car Wash — Take Two: Go to your local car wash and talk with the owner/manager about doing a fundraising event there. Many people go to the same car wash every week. Post flyers a week in advance and then spend a few hours talking with people about what you are doing at the cashier stand. Hand people a flyer, accept donations!
• Karaoke Bar: Ask your local karaoke bar to host a benefit night. Invite all of your friends; charge at the door.
• Rock On!: If you know musicians, ask them to perform a benefit concert at a backyard BBQ, block party or local club. The admission ticket is a check made payable to the RESOLVE Walk of Hope.
• Play Tickets: Ask your local playhouse to donate tickets and then auction them off. Better yet, ask them to donate season passes!
• Creative Friends: Ask a local artist or creative friend to donate a piece of art or jewelry that you can auction off. If you aren’t creative yourself, ask a friend to design a thank you card or blank note card that you can package, tie up with a ribbon and sell.
• Your travel agency: Ask for a plane ticket to raffle off, a night in a hotel, or a weekend getaway.
• Hair Salon: Ask your hair salon if they will donate $2 from each haircut over the course of a weekend to the Walk of Hope event you are participating in.
• Gym: Ask your gym if you, or they, can teach an aerobics, yoga or spinning class as a benefit for you.
• Free Rent: Get your apartment complex to donate one month’s rent to sponsor you.
• Happy Hour: Wear your Walk of Hope t- shirt to Happy Hour and ask people to sign it for a donation. Ask the DJ to announce that you are in the bar.
• Bartender: Ask your favorite bar if you can guest bartend for a night and keep all of your tips. Make sure you invite all of you friends to come in that night.
• Use Your Talent: Offer any talent or skill that you have for a minimum donation; graphic design, massage, hair stylist, make-up stylist, photography, computer skills, sewing, music, baking, cake decorating, etc. Ask talented friends to donate their skills to your fundraising effort. Tie-in ideas with holidays, celebrations and party themes (wedding makeovers, baking party, holiday portraits).
• Sell Space on a Shirt: Sell small blocks of space on a shirt you plan to wear for the Walk of Hope for a suggested $20 donation. Encourage donors to write a tribute to you, a friend or a loved one. The more you can make your donors feel a part of your experience, and therefore a part of the cause, the more they are likely to give on your behalf. Having them sign something you will walk with is a great way to accomplish this.