I've already published a 4 month plan for planning a Walkathon in this blog.
- http://blueskycollaborative.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/how-to-organize.html
- http://blueskycollaborative.typepad.com/blog/2008/05/how-to-organize.html
- http://blueskycollaborative.typepad.com/blog/2008/06/how-to-organize.html
For many organizations, planning an a-thon for the first time requires a leap of faith and a long term plan to grow and sustain the event. And despite proven results in other organizations, many executive and development directors want to find a lower risk way to see if their supporters would indeed paticipate in an "a-thon" - especially during unstable times.
When I'm asked about alternatives, I always suggest that an organization piggyback on an existing road race or event in the first year to see it can work for them. In Massachusetts, some examples of these types of events are the Boston Marathon, Tufts 10K, Falmouth Road Race, etc... There are numerous opportunities in every state.
There are many advantages to using someone else's event for your pledge fundraising. The obvious one is that you don't have to worry about the time, money or liabilities assoaciated with planning the event. Also, there's little or no risk with organizing an "a-thon" around someone else's event. Meaning, break-even is relatively easy to achieve. Plus every little decision is made for you. The location, time, pre and post event festivities, etc...
A drawback is that your participants will need to fork over a registration fee for the event and you won't see any of that money.
Really, all you would need to do is find an event, figure out if they will allow your organization to participate (this is really only an issue in marathons where numbers are hard to come by), get a fundraising website like SWEET, and order some t-shirts. It's a lightweight and low-risk way to do a first year a-thon. We've had clients raise nearly $500,000 over the past few years using this model so it has longer term potential as well.
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