A Quick Fundraising Tip for Extra Life

Quick background: I am the Vice President of the Extra Life Jacksonville Guild in Jacksonville, Florida. I have been doing Extra Life since 2011 and, so far, have raised approximately $2,240 #FTK (For the Kids). Prior to that I was participating in the yearly Halo tournament known as FLAG, or Fight Like a Girl, which raised money for breast cancer research. Once FLAG disestablished, I wanted to find a worthwhile charity initiative to fill the gap and that's when I discovered Extra Life. I'll go more in depth on my history with Extra Life in the future.

I wanted to share a little success story with my fundraising in the past week because I've heard, and heard of, a bit of concern for lack of fundraising within the Extra Life Jacksonville Guild. Last week, I posted the above screenshot, which shows my statistics from when I started doing Extra Life, in 2011, to now. I, given my involvement with the Guild and volunteering at various events since our Guild Kickoff in February, haven't been all that worried about donations throughout the spring and summer. As we passed through the T-1 Month mark until the marathon, I started getting a little nervous.

I had only raised $40 from two donations that were both made in April, even though I posted my fundraising page up quite a bit between then and now. Hence, I posted the stats just for kicks and to show everyone my progress that they've helped me to achieve over the years. If you've got a few years doing Extra Life, I think this may be a good tactic to show your friends and family proof of your success and it may garner some donations. In my case, I went from $40 to $270 in the span of a few hours and it felt pretty good.

So to members of my Guild and Extra Lifers around the world, who are struggling with garnering donations, consider showing your stats on your social media pages or sharing them privately with those who you want to donate to you. For Jacksonville locals in particular, you can share Jacksonville's past statistics and how we went from raising just over $3,000 in 2012 to just over $18,000 in 2013, and just over $23,000 last year. That's a grand total of $44,000+, over the past THREE years, that we've raised for Wolfson Children's Hospital, which doesn't include any of this year's fundraising. It is NO small feat and you should be proud to share these numbers. For folks elsewhere, contact your local Guild chapter or local Children's Miracle Network office, and they should be able to provide this information. You can browse for your local representative Guild on this page.

In all actuality, some folks like to see the real statistics and numbers, as many are wary of donating due to past negative experiences giving to charity. The best way that I've found to do this is to give people examples of what their donation could do to help the kids. In Jacksonville, in particular, our Guild members just took a tour of our local CMN hospital, Wolfson. Some examples of how our guild members can negate the wariness of potential donors is by telling them about what they saw on the tour, the items that our local CMN Director presented at our Guild meeting a few months ago, or telling them a personal story about a kid that they know was helped. If you don't know a kid that was helped, I can tell you about my niece, and everything she went through when she fell off the monkey bars. It shouldn't need to be said, but Wolfson, and CMN Hospitals as a whole, do more than just help terminally ill children. They help all children.

Let's get motivated and let's see some competition on those fundraising leaderboards - both overall team leaderboard as well as some friendly competition between team members. Our "King of Hype" for the Jacksonville Guild finally popped into the Top Ten yesterday for our team. He did that by messaging as many people as he could on Facebook with his fundraising link. He, now, has a semi-ban on sending links, but his effort was clearly rewarded.

In closing, check out the following links!

Interested in participating in Extra Life, visit Extra-Life.org

Join the fabulous Extra Life Jacksonville Guild

Donate to my Fundraising Page

Do it #FTK!