non-event fundraiser

[Guest guest]

Gretchen,

That is great news you found regarding the Office Depot gift to

Scripps for Children's neurological diseases. I know from my past

experience that corporate support such as this as a 'non-event-

fundraiser' is the way to go. Less time consuming and certainly more

direct, with much stricter accounting. Now, on the heels of that

news, here's something that came about at work this week.

Senior management was growing real tired of us all hitting up each

other for donations to each other's charity-of-choice, plus taking up

time on weekends for us to 'event hop', to golf tourneys, galas, etc.

So management came up with a '50 day Corporate Matching-non-event

challenge'.

We all chose a charity we wanted to give to. In the next 50 days, our

goal is to raise $50,000 for that charity. Then, at the end of this

challenge, Corporate Headquarters agreed to match our donations by $2

for every 1$ raised. To sweeten the deal, we have also been given 4

hours a week of company time (on Fridays) to be used in our

fundraising efforts. We are all pretty psyched about this. I was

unsure about which CMT group I wanted to fundraise for. But I knew I

wanted the funds to benefit CMT children's research. Now I know where

my donations will be directed - to Scripps. I never thought about

this until I saw the Office Depot post of yours. So thank you for

reminding me about the work at Scripps!

I have already scheduled an appointment with a Scripps development

person and will go on from there. I'm really excited to be working

like this. Our company has had matching gift programs for some time,

but this involves ALL of us, and already has fostered a boost in

morale in the office. Plus that between all us Type A's here, we are

in a bit of a competition about the whole thing. Management also said

anyone able to surpass the 50 in 50, will have their contributions

matched by 3 to 1.

So I'm proud to be a part of this and working on this non-event, and

also not having any more galas or golf trying up my weekends.

R.