IM for charity..any pitfalls?

This is the main pitfall. My personal feeling is that even so, you get back so much more than you put in, in terms of fulfillment and feeling worthwhile.

Also, it can put a lot of additional stress on you if you've pledged to raise a certain amount. Now that's a good goal to state in contribution-soliciting e-mails and letters ("I want to raise $3000 for XXX") but it gets really tough if you have some sort of obligation to raise a specific amount.

I found that you had to keep trying with your "audience". Sometimes people just forget or intend to donate but they need a second or third "ask" and then they do it.

You'll need to use lots of creative approaches to people, I used the following:

1. email a personal letter to as many as you can. You may have to update this like a newsletter and send it out a number of times (but not too much!)

2. made business cards to hand out, gives people a feeling that you are serious and a contact method. I used Vista Print. Very reasonable.

3. website is nice to have as well. a place to state your cause and reference.

4. facebook page, get people to "like" it and spread it around

5. events where you can stand in, I did "earth day" and a few others where I could hand out my cards and talk with people.

6. obviously friends and family, they help spread the word.

7. local businesses, to give your cards and to ask for donations.

8. forums you belong to, and new ones you find that might help.

I'm sure there's lots of other ways, but these are some basics that I used.

Good luck!

Lots of good stuff here. I just wanted to add that I've had really good luck the last 3 years raising charity money by using Facebook. Not just the auto-generated posts or "hey give this charity your money" - but a sincere post, pointing to my fundraising page for the rest of the story. 

"Next month I'm riding 100 miles with XYZ charity. Hope for a cure is deeply personal to me - find out why and donate to the cause here (link)."

"Many of you know how my life is affected by XYZ disease. Next month I'll ride 100 miles in hope for a cure. Find out how you can help here (link)."

"Last chance to donate before the big ride... find out why this means so much to me and how you can help (link)."

On my fundraising page I went into a little more detail about my family members affected by the disease, personal stories and photos, etc. Deleted most of the "stock" information they provided - I don't think anyone reads that stuff.

I just did my first fund-raising effort. I wasn't sure how it would play, and it was only in the last two weeks before the event that the bulk of the money came in. I hounded my facebook list. What really made me laugh were people who would "like" the post, but not make a contribution. That somewhat tells you the base level of "slacktivism" that facebook itself encourages. 

As for pitfalls, well, I always want to know how much of the money raised goes to the charity, how much to the costs. I've heard that criticism levied at other programs. In my case, there wasn't an expensive travel or race fee that came from it. I paid my own registration fee, and at the end, put in more of my own money as a challenge grant to hit a goal level if I got more donations.

I did feel a bit weird about winning an iPad in the drawing, and someone will be paying for my dinner with the sponsor for hitting a giving level goal. But the rest of it was just incentive prizes that had the name of the charity on it: tshirts, towels, water bottles. When I was involved with Relay for Life, the regional co-ordinators encouraged our teams to not turn down the incentives, for fear of raising costs. They said that the items were already budgeted for, and getting the name out there is a benefit to the charity. 

If you raise money and use it for your plane ticket to the race, that's a pitfall. Otherwise, it's a worthy charity, and you're using something you're already doing to give it attention and encourage giving. That sounds great.

No, there's no downside, and if this is the first time you've done an event for charity, fundraising is easy.  I've got a lot of experience with doing this.

Next week I'm doing my 8th event with Team in Training in the last 5 years.  The first event was very easy, but I've found that each one gets tougher.  I believe it's because people are impressed and excited about it the first time, but then after that, it's "oh, Don is doing another race?  Big deal, he does them all the time."  lol!

My suggestion is to set up a fundraising page where people can use a credit card to donate directly to your charity.  Then send out emails to EVERYONE you know explaining what you're doing, what the training is like, what race day will be like, and most importantly why the charity is important to you and include a link to your fundraising page.  It's important that donating is easy to do.  Also, include a suggestion that if someone wants to help your charity, but cannot make a donation personally, that they forward your email to anyone they know who believes in your charity too.

Send out monthly updates to the entire list, telling them how training and fundraising are going.  Also, this is just my opinion, but I never mention my fundraising or ask for a donation in conversation.  I don't want anyone to ever feel pressured to donate.  I figure if they don't want to, they can just delete my message.

By the way, I can't emphasize how important it is to send your email to EVERYONE you know.  My first event, I remember filtering through my Outlook contacts trying to decide who to send my emails to.  There was one customer of mine who I didn't exactly hit it off with, and I was hesitant to include him.  In the end, I included him, and he donated $100!  Remember that you're not asking for something for yourself, you're asking for them to support a charity.  You never know when someone has a personal connection to a charity's mission that you're not aware of that makes them want to donate, and at the same time appreciative of your efforts.

First of all thanks to everyone for giving me some input.....

The charity has a fundraising page so I can use their page for the basics/intro letter/pics etc...I will also set up a FB page soley for the cause and can give updates regarding training etc.

Fortunately regarding donation goal, I do not need to hit 4-5 K like some of the IM charity groups. I will set a goal but whetehr I raise 500 or 5K there really is not pressure to do so, but I would like to make a lot of money for them.

For my patient base who donate I have a email system thing that they already get newsletters so I can always give them updates

I plan on using september to get everything in order so all the sites and everything is ready to go.

So again, thanks to everyone for giving their 2 cents.....need to make it to the starting line healthy!

I've done this before. I didn't realize I was being a slacker. I was just trying to say I like what your doing but in all reality I can't give money to every one of my facebook friends who decide on a cause. Maybe it's better to just ignore the post all together?

Personally, I don't know if anyone else has this happening on facebook, but I feel a little hounded to support everyone elses causes, home businesses, or whatever random stuff people are trying to garage sale. I just skim most of those posts and don't even really pay attention. I'm a little desensitized I guess.

Not trying to discourage the OP - just giving some honest feedback.

Me and my wife have done the charity thing a few times - each year for the past few years we have each undertaken a different 'challenge' - last year she wanted to run a sub 2 hour half marathon, and I did a 100km ultra running event (nearly freakin' killed me...).  We usually have no expectations, sometimes we raise $100, for the ultra it was nearly $10,000!

One thing I have become aware of in these events is the potential for injury (or other issues) to prevent you from completing.  This happened to my wife this year about 8 weeks out from her 2012 marathon she suffered from a stress fracture.  So we were aware that people had sponsored for an event that she won't be completing.  We got around this by essentially emailing around how disappointed she was, and then making a decent contribution to the charity to show how dedicated she was to the cause - everyone appreciated this I think.  Keep that in mind  ie. an exit strategy in case of illenss or injury!

The other thing which we found useful was to have someone to a 'blog' or regular update in the last few days in the lead up to an event.  Last year, for example, I was my wife's support team for her half-marathon. I used her phone in the last 48 hours to take photos and posted them on facebook showing her last training run, arriving at the registration tent the day before the event, walking part of the course, pinning on the race number and placing race chip on shoe in the morning, then throughout the event I posted updates/photos as she went through checkpoints and finally a photo of her crossing the finish line!  Lots of people felt they were a part of the event because of this  and many made donations over the couple of hours before, during and after her run...

Its a great way to give yourself motivation too!! as you don't want to let people down once they put some cash on the line!