Last spring, all I could think about was boobs. And walking. And money.

Much of my spare time went into planning a wine-tasting fundraiser - plotting about food, publicity, raffle prizes, etc. I solicited prize donations from area businesses and strangers on Etsy. I even made a few brassiere purses myself (which I still think are super-cute). Food was a cheese and cracker tray, a fruit tray and a bunch of cute pastries from a local shop.


The event was held at a local wine shop, which charged me $5 a person and allowed me to keep anything above that in ticket sales. The owner was really nice and helpful, and he also donated a portion of the wine sales from that evening to the walk.

On the day of the event, I lived in fear that NO ONE WOULD COME. Except my aunt and (then) boyfriend, who kindly wore a T-shirt I had bought him that said "Real men wear pink." (Is that a relationship test or what?) Anyway, people came. 18 people. Not as many as I would have liked, but at least I wasn't standing there by myself.


In the end, I came home with most of the fruit and cheese and crackers and $465. $50 of that was money I had contributed for change at the door, and I took out another $100 for the food. So, that left $215 to fight breast cancer. Better than nothing, but certainly not as much as I had hoped for after weeks of work.

But, in retrospect, I could have used my resources better. If I were to do it again, here are some things I would keep in mind:

1) Publicity is king. I spread the word through Facebook, work friends and a short blurb in the newspaper. That probably wasn't enough, especially if the event is in a location that doesn't have much traffic. In retrospect, I would suggest using fliers, newspaper resources, church bulletins, friends, etc. at least 6 weeks before the event. Don't spend any significant amount of money on your promotional efforts, but make sure the materials tell people how to donate if they can't make it to the event. And repeat the publicity efforts as much as possible up until the day of the actual event. Publicize until you are sure you are annoying people. (Because, honestly, people are busy. You probably aren't annoying them.)

2) Apparently people buy wine in the fall, not the spring. The shop owner pulled my boyfriend aside half-way through the event last May and mentioned that he gets most of his sales in the fall leading up to the holiday season, when people tend to drink more wine and use it as gifts. So, depending on when your particular 3-Day event is, a wine-tasting might a good option for your first event of the fundraising season in late October (Breast Cancer Awareness Month) or early November.

3) Don't go overboard on food. I could have done with half (or less) of the food I had. The food ate into the proceeds, and if I had run out, I'm not sure any of the guests would have been disappointed. They were there for wine and to support breast cancer ... and the wine portions were not so large that I felt people needed to consume food or risk leaving intoxicated.

4) Spend more time on publicity; less time on raffle prizes. I sold raffle tickets, so of course I needed raffle prizes. I ended up having 10 packages - and yes, because I had 18 people come, more than half the people who came won something. You need something for people to look at and talk about, but your time is probably better spent trying to get people in the door that trying to get prizes for the prize tables.


Of course, everyone learns through experience. And most 3-Day walkers do not have business or marketing degrees. My attitude throughout fundraising was to simply to keep at it and avoid putting all my eggs in one proverbial basket. After one fundraiser, I already knew I would be working on another so it was easy to keep the pressure light.

Anyone else have any suggestions on strategies to keep in mind while planning a fundraising event?



P.S. Want to make your own brassiere purse? I made a few more after stumbling upon a clearance rack at Wal-Mart. I'll post some instructions on how I put them together next Friday :)

Someday, I will point you, dear readers, to happy blogs. Blogs about cute puppies, fun craft projects and interior decorating.

If you know me at all, you probably know that is a COMPLETE LIE.

Happiness is nice for five minutes or so, but I generally figure it's only a small slice of the story. Real life is this big messed up mix of cute puppies AND bad economics; fashion AND discrimination; charity AND crime; interior design AND high-schoolers who for some reason think it's acceptable to manipulate the social spectrum and bully someone until they are suicidal or beyond. So, I am drawn to people and stories and situations that illuminate people who deal gracefully and courageously with life's more cruel and callous situations.

Bridget of My Big Girl Pants is doing just that. She's a five-year survivor of metastatic breast cancer. Metastatic is a fancy way of saying the cancer that started in the breast has spread to other less-than-nearby areas. It's advanced, and as far as cancers go, it's not good. So, when she says she's a survivor, she means that she's survived three recurrences in the last five years and finds herself in somewhat uncharted territory in that new and improving treatments are allowing more people to live with a cancer that in the not-so-distant past compelled discussions about exactly how much time was left.

Yesterday, she found out that the spot on her liver is cancerous. She and her husband went out for an insanely expensive dinner to allow themselves a night to feel sorry for themselves. Today, I gather, she plans to put her big girl pants back on...

All the garage sales I've ever had essentially: 1) allowed me to get rid of stuff I didn't want to move, or 2) were exercises in carrying stuff outside ... only to carry it all back inside two days later. So, when I saw another 3-Dayer talk glowingly about her garage sale fundraiser, I asked for tips. Here's what Lynna said:

I threw a bit of a temper tantrum this morning.

Last year, one of the lovely Ms. America Tatas from California shared a Tatatini recipe. And I think Tatatinis are meant to be shared, don't you?

A true Tatatini with a kick:

Rub lemon slice around rim of martini glass and dip in pink sugar.

Add 1 to 2 tsp. of Raspberry puree to the bottom of the glass.

In shaker with ice, mix:

Two parts Raspberry Vodka

Two parts Pink Lemonade

One scant part lemon drop mixer

Dash of Raspberry puree

Pour into glass.

Top with a dry rose sparkler.

Make a toast to all the ladies walking for the cure and enjoy!

And if a mocktail is more your style:

Ingredients

• Tonic Water
• Citrus Juice
• Lime Juice
• Cranberry Juice

Quantities for one drink:

• 1 Oz Tonic Water
• 1/2 Oz Citrus Juice
• 1/2 Oz Lime Juice
• 1/2 Oz Cranberry Juice

Blending Instructions:

• Shake tonic water, citrus juice, lime juice and cranberry juice vigorously in a shaker with ice. Strain into a martini glass, garnish with a lime wedge on the rim, and serve.

I grew up in a 3-bedroom, 1.5-bath old house on Michigan Avenue in Saline, Mich., where a patchwork of new subdivisions encroached on good old farming territory. It's just a 45- to 60-minute commute from the major automotive employers in Detroit and Dearborn and a 15-minute drive from Ann Arbor.

It was a nice house, lots of hardwood inside. Across the street was the gas station where a dog collected cash and credit cards at the pump, and a block away was a historic-looking mansion that took up a whole block and was doomed (through someone's will, I think) to be repainted the same greenish color for eternity. When I was 12 or so, I delivered newspapers throughout the neighborhood to pay for horseback-riding lessons and holed up in my bedroom reading for hours. I kind of wanted to BE Anne of Green Gables.

The house wasn't exactly energy efficient. My hamster once went into hibernation when I pushed its cage too close to a drafty window. My mom assumed it was dead and tossed it in the garbage; the little guy warmed up, snapped out of it, and bit my brother when he discovered it after school. We called the detached garage a barn because, well, it looked like a barn, complete with wooden doors that swung out. The upstairs bathroom toilet had no tank on the back; instead, the tank was in the basement. I don't really understand how that worked, but sometimes the water pressure or SOMETHING got off kilter and water shot out of the toilet.

With all its 1920s-era quirks (and a rabbit, several hamsters, fish, and a mixed-breed dog named after the Dow Jones Industrial Average), the house was still big enough to shelter all the insecurities and self-loathing of a teenaged girl who secretly - and sometimes not-so-secretly - thought she was never good enough. There, three siblings fought over whose turn it was to use AOL to connect to the Internet. Our parents paid for the Internet by the minute. We shared one computer. And one phone line. Cellular phones weren't accessories for teenagers yet, but I definitely remember marveling at three-way calling and call waiting. Can't remember if we had caller ID; we did have a fax machine, though.

Now, (I think) my house houses some sort of business accounting group, whose owners ripped out my mother's gardens to make room for a parking lot. But they saved the barn. I vaguely remember standing outside the house a few years after my parents moved away, staring at how different everything was and feeling something indescribable between annoyed and irate. Someone (I don't remember who) mentioned that the secretaries who worked there got freaked out because they thought they heard noises coming from the basement, where a concrete cistern collected rainwater.

We used the cistern water to water outdoor plants. There was a time I figured the cistern would be a good place to hide a dead body or two, so I could see how housewives-turned-secretaries could get the heebie-jeebies. But I figured anyone loosely associated with the people WHO PAVED OVER MY BACKYARD deserved an eerie feeling every now and then. Those voices would be the SOUNDS OF MY LOST CHILDHOOD, folks. (In reality, noise likely carried through the large heating vents in an old house that was never updated. But really.)

I've hung my pictures and clothes in several cities since then, many which left enduring marks on my personality. But that house housed me back before I really knew anything and was eager for everything new.

That was back before I knew small towns operated under false (but entrenched) perceptions. Back when I loved the smell of ink as the press printed the Saline Reporter just hours after we slapped the stories on the page using a wax machine and roller. Back when I wrote poetry in honor of coworkers' birthdays and unabashedly gave it to them. And crushed on guys who never seemed to crush on me back. (OH! And a girl was run over by a tractor in my high school parking lot on Take Your Tractor to School Day. She recovered, but seriously, my high school had Take Your Tractor to School Day.)

I haven't been to Saline in years. They built a mammoth new high school a few years after I graduated, and now my high school is the middle school. And somehow I doubt anyone drives tractors there. I'm sure nobody would know me from Adam, or remember the girl who angered old ladies by referencing Barenaked Ladies lyrics in the first sentence of a newspaper article. And I certainly haven't been tempted to use song lyrics as a lede in at least a decade. But Miranda Lambert's song kind of makes my mind wander...

I kind of wish I could quilt. An ex-boyfriend bought me a sewing machine for my birthday last year - and it was the perfect gift. But I've only used it once, because I've been too busy to dedicate myself to any major craft project. Especially one that involves learning how to work new equipment. (Just figuring out how to thread the thing involved about an hour and harassing my roommate's grandma.)

But I secretly suspect I will be involved with the 3-Day in one capacity or another for years to come. So, I asked a former Ms. America Tata how she handled a quilt raffle last year, JUST IN CASE I have tons more time next year. Here's how it went, in Shelli's own words:

It is NOT.

If you are quasi-obsessed with Black Renaissance author Zora Neale Hurston like I am (I know you probably aren't), then you probably know the fairy tale of Alice Walker revitalizing interest Hurston's work in the 1970s, years after the books fell out of print and after Hurston's death. Between Walker and Oprah Winfrey, Hurston's works were thrust into the literary canon more than a decade after she died in 1960, too poor to provide for a funeral or headstone herself.

So Walker went to Fort Pierce, Fla., in search of the grave site, waded through waist-high weeds that probably hid snakes in a neglected, segregated cemetery. She had Hurston's grave marked with a headstone and an epitaph declaring her "Genius of the South," which was a phrase borrowed from a Jean Toomer poem.

Walker wrote about this adventure in an article Ms. Magazine published in 1975. I tracked that article down in a compilation of essays and other writings by Walker called In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose. (Walker uses the term "womanist" to describe "a feminist of color.")

The reality (for me, anyway) wasn't as great as the fairy tale. I found it hilarious that Walker falsely told several people that she was Hurston's niece to get them to open up about the impoverished author who had died 13 years before. Walker's continued shock and outrage that fewer people remembered Hurtson in her hometown of Eatonville (which was the first all-black incorporated town) and in Fort Pierce is alternately endearing and annoying.

Perhaps part of Walker's outrage stemmed from the fact that she, herself, was a less-than-rich black female writer (or perhaps I am too reliant on socioeconomic stereotypes of my own time), but I personally don't find it that shocking that folks living on the same street in a VERY modest neighborhood had no idea that a literary genius lived across the street until her health failed more than a decade before.

Consider: 1) Hurston was not widely known at the time; 2) the folks Walker met hadn't lived there at the same time as Hurston (the only reason I have any clue who lived in my neighborhood 10 years ago is because it's new construction - it was a field 10 years ago, I believe); and 3) one can easily imagine that lower working class families with multiple young children don't have time to consider or appreciate many cultural gems around them.

Anyway, once you get past Walker's disappointment in the local population, you get to embrace her reaction to searching for Hurtson's unmarked grave in "Garden of the Heavenly Rest" with a hand-drawn diagram and an employee from the funeral home:

"I stand still for a few seconds, looking at the weeds. Some of them are quite pretty, with tiny yellow flowers. They are thick and healthy, but dead weeds under them have formed a thick grey carpet on the ground. A snake could be lying six inches from my big toe and I wouldn't see it. We move slowly, very slowly, our eyes alter, our legs trembly."

Walker struggles to align the map with the actual cemetery she sees before her, but finally decides on a place for the headstone based on a depression in the ground in what seems to be the right spot (and a few rounds of simply shouting Hurtson's first name. To the relief of the lady from the funeral home, no one responds.) Then, she laments on her inability to afford an extravagant headstone but buys a more modest stone from a "monument man" who sends her back with a flag to mark the proper spot.

This entire narrative begs one major question, for me anyway: If Walker was willing to spend the time and money to fly to Florida, meet up with a (white) student writing her dissertation on Hurtson, and wander around until they found her likely gravesite, WHY didn't she just take it upon herself to clear the weeds out of this one-acre cemetery to make sure they found the right burial site? If no one has maintained the cemetery, how much trouble can one really get themselves into for taking a weedwacker to the weeds? And maybe burning them in a nice little bonfire?

As a dorky side note, Walker indicated on the headstone that Hurston was born in 1901. She wasn't. She was born in 1891 but lopped 10 years off her life when she was 26 and wanted to finish public high school, according to this bio.

As another dorky side note, you need not fear that the town of Eatonville does not appreciate its most famous one-time resident any more. A local association started an annual festival in Hurston's honor. It was part of a larger effort in 1987 to prevent a road-widening project that would have destroyed much of the small town's historic area. As of the 2000 census, Eatonville had about 2,400 residents, 89.3 percent of whom were African American, according to Wikipedia. About a quarter of the population lived below the poverty line.

This week's giveaway is a pair of pink shoelaces I bought two years ago from Shop Komen. I got 10 or 15 pair and gave them to various friends and teammates, but I still have a few left. The pair in the giveaway (obviously) have never been worn.  :)

What better way to tell your mother (or the mother of your children) that you love her than by donating to fighting a disease that will strike one in eight women? Really, who needs flowers? Donate to a Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure walker instead!

I tried that pitch last year with admittedly limited success, but I still really like the idea. You can offer personalized letters, cards, or other small gifts for people who make donations in their mother's (or someone else's mother's) name. That way, the person has something to physically hand the special lady on her special day.

Mother's Day is May 9 this year, so you have about a month to plan and execute this fundraiser. Here's a sample of the letter I used last year. Good luck (and happy Mother's Day!)

P.S. If you are a loyal ChaiLattePlease reader and aren't raising money to walk in the 3-Day yourself, may I suggest donating to one of my lovely team members? Linda, Molly, Vicky, and Jennifer are still working to reach the $2,300 minimum goal.

P.P.S. I'm running a little late this morning, so I'll post the new giveaway later today. But as always, you can comment on this post to enter the giveaway (if you're eager to enter before you know what it is :)

Next week's Friday FundRAISER will feature a pretty successful quilt raffle.

I've been kinda behind (read: busy/lazy/mostly busy) and didn't really pick winners for the Friday giveaways UNTIL TODAY. To be all formal and official, I set up an account at Random.org and used their Third-Party Draw Service.

For the pink frame: Shannon from Texas is the winner. (Her odds were incredibily good, seeing as how she commented twice and there were only four qualifying comments total.)


And for the pink toggle bracelet: Rhowena is the winner out of nine entries.


And for the pink New Balance keychain: Becky Gibbs. (Some super-nice person left an anonymous comment saying they really liked my blog. Which made my day. But anonymous comments cannot be entered into the giveaway. For what should be obvious reasons :)


This Saturday, I'll pick a winner for the Cooling Headband giveaway. Then, I'll have two more giveaways: a pair of cute cell-phone charms and two pairs of pink ribbon shoelaces.

Thanks for reading my blog.  :)

Okay, so maybe my score shouldn't be zero - I've been wearing contact lenses for a little over a week. I've actually been WEARING them up until Sunday evening, when I dislodged one while rubbing my right eye. It was later at night so I figured I'd just take them out and call it an evening, but my hands were coated with puppy love and food (having eaten and played with BlackJack since last washing my hands).

So, I closed my right eye and went to wash my hands before I touched my eyes. Somewhere in the process, I involuntarily blinked and MY CONTACT FELL INTO A SINK FULL OF DIRTY WATER. Curses. I put on my glasses, turned on the lights and looked for the darned thing everywhere, but alas, found nothing.

I gave up.

The next morning, when it was light again, I drained the sink and LO AND BEHOLD, there was my contact, resting peacefully in the drain strainer. I plopped it in solution and pondered whether I could still use it. By ponder, I mean I called the Walmart Vision Center and the lady who answered the phone asked me a series of questions prompted by a computer program. It ultimately informed us that soft contacts tend to absorb whatever they are sitting in. So, if the dish water had soap and random food particles in it, I MIGHT feel some burning if I put the contact back in my eye.

I elected to just toss that contact and open a new package. I swear, I had NO IDEA these things were so complicated. ;)

So if this isn't a fundraising idea that will RAISE you up, I don't know what is. It might, in fact, inspire you to host a PG-13 rated bake sale ... but I guess the world could use a few more of those :)

Last year, one of my 3-Day teammates made these cute headbands. They have crystals in the inside, so you just soak this in water, pop it in the freezer, and then take it along for a long walk in hot weather. Nice to wear along your neck or as a headband. You also can press it along a pressure point (wrists, etc.) for increased coolage.


Update: A commenter was kind enough to let me know I hadn't remembered where our team got these items. Apparently, the Cooldannas were kindly donated by www.zanheadgear.com. Looking at the Web site, I see there's no need to freeze the bandana; simply soak it in cold water for 10 minutes to activate the crystals.




Whew! And after this, there will only be two more weeks of giveaways. Unless more giveaway items magically appear as clutter in my closet :)

But the rules remain the same:

- Leave one (and only one) comment here. If you comment on the Bubbles for Boobies fundraiser post, that will count as an entry, too.

I Google people all the time. I guess part of being a reporter/curious person is cyber-stalking people. Never know what you need to know about someone until you know it, right?

The key is: I NEVER TELL the person I Googled them.

Because that would just be weird, right? YES, YES, IT IS! I was talking with a new/unfamiliar source for the newspaper a few weeks ago when, suddenly, in the lull in the conversation, he said: "I see you're quite the little writer." I had no idea what that meant, so I made some non-committal sound in case he was going to start criticizing me about something. As embarrassing as misunderstood sarcasm is, the moment I realized he had found my blog, read it, AND WAS NOW TEASING ME ABOUT IT left me speechless.

No worries. He was willing to fill the dead air space. "I have to tell you, I will not be buying a boobie beanie." And then he asked if I was vegetarian! (Apparently not understanding that my post about "vegetarian hamburgers" was really about brownies and cupcakes.)

Wow.

The conversation ended okay, the article was okay, and I've talked with this source again without incident. And I've been almost obsessively Googling myself ever since then.

The results aren't that disastrous. I've resisted the urge to post anything on this blog that I wouldn't want a future employer to read (with the understanding that this is a light-hearted personal blog, of course, and not some sort of online portfolio. Rest assured, I do not consider this some of my better writing.) I'll admit there's been the occasional Facebook status update that could be misconstrued if you don't know me or my sense of humor, but those fade away into Cyber Nowhere Land (from what I can tell). No embarrassing or inappropriate pictures.

But I honestly could polish my online image a bit. My Twitter profile could be a little more professional. LinkedIn is one of the first things that pops up; that's pretty innocuous. Then Brazen Careerist, which I'll admit I'm only lukewarm about as a concept. I should probably either cancel my account or beef up my profile there. It's meant to be a career advice/networking site for 20-somethings, but too often I find it bogged down by the worries of 20-somethings who don't have any firm knowledge or experience upon which to base their advice. Unless they are looking to network laterally or in a new field, most 20-somethings are probably better off trying to network with older, more experienced people, right? I don't know. But I should probably decide soon and respond accordingly.

Then there's Blog to Lose, a networking site for bloggers who are trying to lose weight. My profile is set to private there, so that's also innocuous. What woman hasn't tried to lose weight at one point or another?

The rest is just stuff that comes with being a reporter: a few mentions from local political bloggers (not all favorable, but as I said, it comes with being a reporter) and old articles (including this gem on a pet cemetery and this contributing line I got while interning at USA Today).

How conscious are you of your "online image" and Google search results?

Update: All the cards and candles have now been claimed. But I have more stuff posted at:
http://chailatteplease.com/unofficial-3-day-resources/

I don't know about other three-peaters (er, people who have done multiple 3-Days), but I've accumulated a good pile of unused fundraising STUFF. I'm crewing (not walking) this year, ergo I have no fundraising minimum and admittedly have permanently abandoned some fundraising ideas/efforts.

But there is some stuff that you might find useful if you're doing some major 3-Day fundraising. So, in true garage-sale style, please peruse, pick it over, and comment or e-mail me at jillianduch at hotmail dot com if you're interested. The money I'm asking for each item covers my expected shipping costs (and maybe a little left over for the materials involved in the items) but trust me, this is not a fundraising effort for myself. The funds most likely will be funneled back into this blog or into 3-Day efforts.

I accept Paypal, but if you don't do Paypal, I'm sure we can figure out something :)


Handmade notecards
After setting these out at a few craft shows last year, I have an odd assortment left over. But they'd make perfect thank-you cards or stationery for encouraging notes.

MOM: You give such great support
I have four individual cards that each come with a bright pink envelope. 75 cents each


Let's find a cure for breast cancer before I grow boobies
Hehe... I did indeed use a picture of myself as a child (look what cute blonde hair I used to have!). Comes with white envelopes. I have a set of nine. $4


Fight like a girl!
Comes with white envelopes. Two sets of five. $4/set


Peace, Love, Happiness
All spelled out in little pink bubbles. Comes with white envelopes. I have two sets of seven. $5/set.

Save a 'pear'
Support breast cancer research. Still my favorite slogan! I'm left with a set of eight in this lavender/tan print. $5

Save the ta-tas!
White cards decorated with pink paper flowers. Two sets of four. $3/set


Miscellaneous babies with pink ribbons.
Various images with slogans like "Find a cure" and "Join the fight" Set of seven pink cards with white envelopes. $5

As I said, if you're interested, simply comment below and send the funds via Paypal to jillianduch at hotmail dot com. I'll update the listings as items are claimed. Good luck with all your fundraising and awareness efforts!