June 2012 - The Blog

Team Diabetes Iceland - 2003

It’s on.

With more than $9 500 raised for Team Diabetes Iceland, I’m over my fund raising goals for the half marathon in Reykjavik this August.

There are a few facets to being a Team Diabetes member. The first is the fundraising. Each international trip brings with it a requirement to raise at least $6 100 to cover the hard costs of the trip and to provide funding to the Canadian Diabetes Association.

The second part is awareness. By doing the fundraising, you become and ambassador for the CDA, spreading awareness about people living with diabetes and the importance of making research breakthroughs.

The third part is the training. Completing a 10k, half marathon, or full marathon is no easy task, and you need to give yourself at least 4 months of regular running to get in shape to get around the course in one piece.

With the fundraising completed, and the awareness an ongoing effort, the training is now my full focus.

I use Runner’s World Magazine’s SmartCoach app to plan my training. You tell it a recent race distance and time, how hard you want to train, the distance you’re training for, and it will plot out a 3-4 day a week training routine to get you to the finish line. I’ve used this planner for 3 years, and it’s my go-to schedule that hasn’t failed me yet.

I need to give some thanks to some big sponsors who have helped me raise the money for this Team Diabetes Iceland event. I fundraise by ‘freelancing for charity’. I pick up extra work and then have people make donations to Team Diabetes in exchange for the freelance efforts.

ING Direct's $3333 cheque for Team D

ING Direct supported with a $3333 donation as part of their Orange for YYC event this week. It involved hashtag promotion, and my hashtag had the most mentions thanks to support from Amber Mac, Marc Garneau, Chris Brogan, and Jann Arden.

I write (and have written) content for a number of blogs. The money I make doing this freelancing is a crucial part of the fundraising I do. Sites like Yummy Mummy Club, Babble’s Kid Scoop, and Future Shop’s Tech Blog are all a part of that effort.

I’ll be emceeing the Stampede Road Race in exchange for a Team Diabetes donation.

The CORE held a promotion for the Mini Countryman and their mall last summer. The grand prize was $5000, and while I fell short, they still kicked in a significant amount to Team Diabetes as a consolation.

I’m currently doing the U Weight Loss program as a part of my training in hopes to lose some weight to help me pick up the pace. They’ve been a great help in getting my diet back on track, and in line with my running goals.

Without the help of these sponsors, and friends who generously click my donation button to pitch in, the fundraising wouldn’t happen. That would mean awareness wouldn’t spread, and the training would slip further down the priority list. The sponsors make it easier to focus on the other two parts of being on Team D.

If you’d like to come on board as a sponsor for 2013, fire me an email and let’s talk about how I can help your company in exchange for support of Team Diabetes.

My personal charity of choice is Team Diabetes. If I enter any media contest where an honorarium to charity is offered, I choose Team Diabetes.

This has resulted in big donations from the likes of LG Canada and The CORE in Calgary. In a few weeks I will be on a panel for ING Direct to celebrate 3 Things for Calgary, and there is an honorarium up for grabs to the panelist that gets the most hashtag mentions on Twitter.

My other panelists will be Peter Aceto, President & CEO of ING DIRECT Canada, and Lori Stewart (founder of Awesome Foundation Calgary). We will be discussing the effect that individuals and organizations can have in their community alongside the impact social media can have for inspiring others and driving change.

$3333 to the charity of choice of each panelist is up for grabs to the person that can get their hashtag mentioned the most. That’s a BIG donation to Team Diabetes for each mention of #OrangeforYYC2. So you will be seeing the hashtag a lot from me between June 7 and 21. I’d also urge you to use it as well.

The kind of fundraising I do for Team Diabetes, I call “freelancing for charity.” I will do promotional appearances, voice work, sponsorship deals, writing, etc all in exchange for donations to the cause.

So that means taking gigs like this one and hammering out a few tweets in hopes of getting some good money for a good cause.

My wife and I are off to Reykjavik, Iceland in August to run the Half Marathon, and while we have personally donated the hard costs of the travel, we need to do some extra fundraising to hit our goals. This money will put us over the top.

So, please, visit the Eventbrite page and RSVP for the event on June 21, and use the hashtag #OrangeforYYC2 to promote the event in your Twitter stream as often as possible.

If that’s not your bag, fine – just please excuse the hashtagginess of my stream for the next 2 weeks, it’s for a good cause.