A friend and colleague asked me.
It was personal and I didn’t want to let him down.
It was (a little bit of) a challenge to how macho and bold I could be.
It was public.
Turning something like this down, given who I am and my values, would be just a little bit shameful.
Everyone was doing it.
It was fun.
I could talk to my kids about it and get them involved in it.
It was easy and quick to do.
I could share it with friends in a way that felt totally positive – without putting them out. In fact, many friends said “Thank you! I was hoping to be challenged.”
It incorporated video, and allowed me, in 30 seconds, to create a video I was happy to post and that I knew would be entertaining (no edits, no storyboards, no nothing).
Did I mention how fun it was?
That’s a pretty good list to choose from for how you fundraise. I’m positive you won’t hit all of these, but if you’re hitting none of them then you’re pushing a rope uphill.
And the really tricky bits that I can’t stop thinking about are:
I did give to ALS, but most people won’t. That’s totally fine as long as what you create is huge.
The specifics of the organization I was giving to, and the cause, didn’t matter. This would have worked for any cause.
I talked to my kids about ice water not about ALS.
Pretty quickly my head starts to swirl about ends and means, whether (some? all?) philanthropy should be fun and what is lost when it is fun (and what doesn’t happen when it’s not).
When giving is more like eating dessert than it’s like eating your vegetables, is that a problem? Certainly not, today, for the folks suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.
(and for those keeping track, the ALS Association has now raised nearly $100 million from 3 million donors…versus about $23 million last year).
