Bike MS 2015 - Fundraising Update!

Thought I'd post a quick fundraising update and compare where we are this year compared to the past couple of years. Spoiler alert - overall fundraising is down, but individual contributing is up! Details after the jump.

Well keep this update short. As of June 17th, We're sitting at $3,290 raised, or 54% of our goal of $6,000. (NOTE: when I say "we" I mean all of us - you and me together). As a team, Team WinCo is sitting at $19,204 - 64% of our goal of $30,000.

I thought I'd compare fundraising progress this year to the last couple of years, and this is what I found.

June 13, 2013: $5,073
June 17, 2014: $4,931
June 18, 2015: $3,290

Fundraising this year would appear to be way down, and in fact it is. Part of this may be due to the late start this year - and 2014 fundraising started later than 2013. Must be a trend there. A better way to look at is this: how do I compare after "n" days of fundraising?

2013: after 90 days - $5,073
2014: after 26 days - $4,931
2015: after 10 days - $3,290

Looking at this way, we appear to be on track!

Having said that, an even BETTER way to look at this is to compare progress to goal with "n" number of days left before fundraising is closed. In other words - how am I doing with 42 days of fundraising remaining compared to prior years? Unfortunately, I don't have historical data saved in the right format to exactly track this. But this is a change I can make in my donor spreadsheet for next  year...

One item of note: individual giving is UP this year. Last year, we had the opportunity to hold a fundraiser at 10 Barrel Brewing here in Boise. That fundraiser netted over $2,400. We did not have that opportunity this year. If we added a $2,400 fundraiser to this year's total, we be sitting at $5,690 - ahead of 2013 totals!

Having said that, there is another metric I track. I try my best to do a reasonable forecast of what I can expect to bring in. And then I set my goal, not based on the forecast, but a gut feel based on prior years fundraising, and events that I know will or not occur. Since we had no fundraiser to replace 10 Barrel this year, I dropped by goal from $8,000 to $6,000. (I did not hit the $8,000 goal last year) And, after looking at my donor-by-donor forecast, I found that I had a gap of $1,200. In other words, I had no idea where the extra $1,200 was going to come from to hit the goal. BUT - there has been a flurry of unexpected donations this week! Thanks to those donations, my gap is now less than $800. This is a great improvement and gives me hope that we may actually exceed the $6,000 goal this year!

To summarize, fundraising may appear to be lagging this year, but I'm very optimistic that we'll meet or exceed our goal of $6,000. And, I'll continue to look for fundraising opportunities such as the 10 Barrel fundraiser last year. I'm also confident that Team WinCo will meet our goal of $30,000 - which will be our highest total ever. This optimism is based on conversations with other riders about funds pledge but no yet received...and extrapolating a bit based on last year's performance.

A huge THANK YOU to all who have donated so far. As always, please click on the banner image above, or on the "click to donate" button to your right to help us reach our goals this year!