Fundraising: What You Might Do to Help
Yourself (Attend the TMA Symposium in Seattle)
Drema O'Dell

Hello, my name is Drema. I live in Virginia and have had TM in my life since 1989. I want to be in Seattle next year along with my very supportive daughter, Heather. Since I have been on medical leave of absence for the past seven months, it will take a financial miracle to do it. And I do believe in miracles. Especially if a person is willing to step out on faith that they will be able to accomplish their goal. Then their faith is rewarded by doing more than they could possibly have expected to do. I just finished making 162 pounds of fudge and sold it to raise my Christmas shopping money. I did it!

In thinking about how I am going to get to Seattle, I have come up with some ideas that will work for me in my part of the country. I hope you will find some you can use and this in turn will spark some new ideas from you that will further my efforts also.

Last summer my daughter held a car wash at Wal-Mart on the weekend of the fourth of July. Wal-Mart gave her matching funds for TMA. You can request matching funds for many things from many companies. Sending people to a non-profit organization's symposium may be a matching funds request that many companies would approve. I think if there are several of you TM'ers in a geographical area, you could work together on this. They would be more likely to approve matching funds if it were going to benefit several people directly in that store's local area.

Many home party companies, such as Tupperware, allow you to do fundraisers where you are given a percentage of gross sales. The more people that you would have participating, the more money you would make.

My church has also used the matching funds program in fundraisers with Wal-Mart, selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts. They buy doughnuts from the distributor for $1.25 per dozen (300 units usually) and are sold in the lobby for $3.00 per dozen!!! Pick a busy Saturday before a holiday and this is an easy sell-out. On a smaller scale there are traditional bake sales.

Southern gospel singings are big in my local area. You may be able to use your church or a school auditorium. Getting free advertising on radio and in the newspapers plus the true support of church members will help greatly. Probably a free-will offering is what you will garner from this approach.

I plan to have a choir festival soon after Easter. Church choirs will have spent the holidays working on church programs and Easter will be the end of the difficult and time-consuming season for them. They will have loads of well-rehearsed music and, hopefully, will love the chance to present it to an audience outside of their own church setting. I may go with free tickets to be given out by each choir in their own church with a prize (yet to be determined) going to the directors of the choirs that give out the most tickets. I think free-will offerings will be the only way to go on this, as well.

If you or your family is involved in high school band then you may try having a band festival. This would involve an entry fee per band and trophies being donated for the winners.

Does all of this work make you too fatigued? You need to get family, friends, church members and pastors behind you. Make them see how much you want and need to go to Seattle. I know that Sandy Siegel can provide us with letters to send to all of our relatives, friends, and co-workers asking them to make a personal donation to help us to finance our trips. My daughter used this method to raise funds to go on a mission trip to Alaska her senior year of school and it was great to see the response from relatives and neighbors and church members.

We may also be able to obtain sponsorships or grants from local service clubs with a copy of the letters from TMA about the purpose of the trip and exhibiting a financial need for their support.

Your church or religious group may be willing to sponsor you financially or assist you in raising money. You may need to come up with the ideas, but you will be able to find people who will understand that you are not able to do all of the physical work involved and they will help you. Retail businesses love to get their names and pictures in the paper for helping humanity. Some grocery and restaurant chains provide coupon books for organizations to sell to raise funds. A club or class could sponsor this for you. Raffles can raise large funds quickly once you have obtained the items to raffle and checked on the state and local laws concerning such programs.

Good luck and let's get started in the New Year raising money to get to Seattle and even a little extra to send to the TMA to help defray the cost of the conference. Please share your ideas with each other on the Transverse Myelitis Internet Club or through letters to each other in the mail. If you live near others with TM (check your directory), then get in touch with each other and work together on your fund-raising efforts.

Hope to see you all in Seattle!

Drema
levi[AT SIGN]i-plus.net