Fund Raising Update – Dec 10, 2008

For a change, this week, I will post more about my fund raising in additional to the marathon training since fund raising is as much important to this marathon as it is to finish the marathon and I want to make sure that I hit my fund raising target of $1500 before I start the marathon on Sunday (Dec-14) at 8:00 am. So, please contribute to the Asha-Strides of Hope (http://www.ashanet.org/dallas/soh/Srinivasan_profile_2008.html) and be part of this marathon journey of helping the children through your support.

I spent this past weekend sending personalized e-mails to about 300 of my friends to ask for funds for the marathon. I called some of them and chatted on IM/chat to request them to contribute. This was the first time that that I discovered that I knew 300 people from my school / college / graduate school / work. Although I have done some kind of social activity with most people in this group in the past, it has been a while since I have e-mailed or talked to some of the people in the group. So, I was a little apprehensive on sending an e-mail asking just for the donation to Asha. But then this was about a good cause and I figured most people would at least get to know more about Asha and the good work being done by the team and some of them would be motivated to donate for such a good cause. I hope I have accomplished the information part and some of them have even donated for the good cause. Some of them came back saying that they already donate to many good causes or are already involved in some kind of charity. This was a good thing to know. The intention of my e-mail was more to inform about the good work done by Asha as much it was to ask for donation. I will write more about the process that I followed for the fund raiser in future posts.

As I always end my blogs with numbers from my GPS, here are some numbers from my fund raiser effort:

• Target Goal : $1500
  
• Funds raised so far: $1000
  
• Number of people that personal E-mail was sent to : 300
  
• Number of people who have donated so far: 19
  
• Percentage of people who have donated: 6.33%
  
• Average amount of donation: 1000/19 = $52.6
  
• Remaining Funds to raise to reach the goal : $500
  

Once again I request you to contribute to the Asha – Strides of Hope and be part of my marathon effort by helping to reach my fundraising goal. Please click on the link below to contribute online:

http://www.ashanet.org/dallas/soh/Srinivasan_profile_2008.html