Rakin' Cash

Seeing some of your own ‘qualities’ come to life in your kid is eye opening.

Lyza Bee had her first fundraiser for her U-10 girls soccer team yesterday. The plan, as explained by the team Mom, was to gather pledges – per lap – as the girls were to run laps around a soccer field for ½ hour. Lyza was given a form to track the name, amount, contact info ect.

Now the reason that nobody reading this blog has ever fielded a request from me for a donation/team in training/tour de cure is because I fookin’ hate asking people for money. I don’t mind being asked to donate, but I personally hate to ask for handouts.

So Lyza, possibly following in my footsteps, blew off my question about 11 times over the weekend - “Have you completed your donation form yet?” Thinking I’d give her a start, I called my Uncle and made him aware of the fundraiser to which he replied – “put me in for $25 flat – not per lap”. I said cool, and told Lyza on Friday night that Steve was giving her $25….figuring she wanted to raise $100 or so. She looked at me, smiled, and said “Dad, my goal is $30. I’ll throw a 5 in from my wallet and I’m good. Can I go play with Nate?” The following was then exchanged:

CB: “OK, but having me place one call for you, and you tossing in $5 from your wallet isn’t exactly fundraising”
LB: “But my goal is $30”
CB: “Fine, but you only have one donor, and you didn’t even ask for the money”
LB: “Yeah, but why ask a bunch of people for 50 cents a lap when I can get one person to give me $25?”
CB: “You didn’t get Steve to give you $25”
LB: “I have to run for a half hour Dad that’s the hard part of all this, so can you call Grandpa Juan, and Aunt Meg for me?”
CB: “I’ll call Meg, but you have to talk to her”
LB: “That’s OK. I’m OK with $30. I made my goal”

So, she showed up, ran her little body into the ground – 14 times around a soccer field, and raised $30. Some of the girls (read Soccer Moms) who took it a bit more seriously even had ‘performance based pledges’ where they got more $$ for running further. NFL style.

So, our shared view on fundraising is to never raise the bar too high, and just score one donor. It’s easier to collect pledges that way.