Lemon-Aid
Right now we’re working overtime to try and raise the $32,000 we need to acquire land and build the first classroom before we head out to Tanzania the week after next. Fundraising truly is an art and it is definitely hard work. Fortunately, we’ve been blessed to find a few ambassadors who have been willing to spread the word and ask for donations alongside us. We’ve even recruited a few adorable kids.
Just this past week, Stacey’s niece Zoe, who is 8 years old, set up a lemonade stand in front of her grandmother’s house with all proceeds going to Epic Change. She manned the stand every day after school along with a handful of her classmates and friends.
I must say they were quite a team, even persevering through rainstorms that came in almost every day this past week. The response was terrific - one neighbor came by with $8 from pennies she had saved and cashed in. She gave the money to Zoe, and told her that she knew that the money would be used for a better cause than anything she could use the money for; it was quite sweet. In total, Zoe and her friends raised just over $200 for Epic Change!
We also held a yard sale yesterday which brought in about $400 for the cause which was quite good considering it happened to rain yesterday – don’t worry, we’ll do it again next weekend with hopefully better weather. Thanks to the Starbucks in Viera for donating 5 gallons of coffee to serve at the yard sale.
The other piece of great news was that our challenge grant proposal was accepted! For those of you unfamiliar with a challenge grant, it is basically setting a fundraising target that we must achieve within a certain timeframe and if that target is met, Epic Change will receive a matching donation for a percentage of the target. In this case, we need to raise at least $25,000 in the next 12 months to receive a $5,000 matching donation. I want to thank Ms. Kristina Flanagan for this incredibly generous opportunity; we hope to exceed her expectations.
Stacey, Diane and I have also been doing quite a bit of reconnecting and have contacted old friends that we haven’t spoken to in years in order to spread the word about Epic Change. I think Diane has the record as she’s recently reconnected with someone she had met almost 30 years ago! It’s such a nice feeling to reconnect with someone after such a long time and feel like you haven’t missed a beat. And everyone I tell about Epic has been so supportive and helpful that it confirms for me I’m doing the right thing right now.
We leave for Tanzania in November and are looking forward to purchasing some land and breaking ground for the new Shepherds Junior. We’ve raised over $27,000 but still have a long ways to go before reaching our goal. We really need everyone’s help right now – please ask your friend’s, neighbors, and family members to make a tax-deductible donation today or to get in touch with us if they want to do more as part of this wonderful cause. We need volunteers to help us with everything from marketing and web design to fundraising. For all of you kids on Facebook and MySpace, invite every one of your friends and contacts to join our cause and make a donation, however small it may be.
Just think of this: I’ve got about 40 friends on Facebook and let’s say each of them has 40 unique friends each and so on. If we just take it to the third level and every single person contributed $5, you can see how much and how quickly we could make an impact:
Level 1 - My friends: 40 * $5 = $200
Level 2 - Their friends: 1600 * $5 = $8,000
Level 3 - Their friend’s friends: 64000 * $5 = $320,000
TOTAL RAISED: $328,200
I think we could solve world hunger and have world peace if we took this 3 levels further, but I digress.
Finally, I don’t think I’ve ever worked this hard in my life! This effort has been consuming so much of my time and energy that I forget to eat some days (although I could stand to lose a few pounds so it’s not so bad). Poor Diane had food poisoning last week but has been quite a trooper and has visited just about every single person in the city of Albany to inform them of our cause, and Stacey has been working like a whirlwind fundraising and coordinating the creative arts projects we will do while in Tanzania. Thank God we’ve got the girls Stacey and Diane, they’re incredible!
It’s been an exhilarating journey so far and we’ve just only just started. I now get excited every time an email comes in that says “Notification of Payment Received from PayPal” or “So and So has joined the cause Epic Change on Facebook”, all I can say is keep it coming!
Much love.
Posted: October 22nd, 2007 under The Foundry.
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