What Comes Next?

So how do you take all the momentum from a successful first event and make sure people stay involved and get going?

Well, that's a good question, and I'm a little worried we may not be doing the best job.

We did a great job of getting the evite out for the second event pretty quickly:
Evite for Young Professionals II

You've gotta make sure the committee and the network knows the next steps--Sign up for the stair climb, start raising money. I guess that's what the next event is for, but there's all this time in the middle people could be using to ask their companies for money or to start planning events of their own.

For instance, Taylor and I are throwing a party. Secured a bar, we'll have a $10 donation at the door, then drink specials. It's at this cool looking place in North Beach (thank you intern Annie for giving me the hookup)

www.rosewoodbar.com

We're also hoping to get catering donations so we can give people some food to go with their alchy--just to be on the safe side, and offer a lil' something more. Hopefully we'll get some fun raffle items as well--you know gift certificates, bottles of wine, etc etc.

When I am going to bring this event together is beyond me, as I am in the office for two and a half days this week and then will be in Maine with neither phone nor internet for 5 days--BRING ON VACATION LAND!

Lobstah anyone?

Successful Kick-Off Event!

Thursday night we had our first event. We had great turn-out, around 35-40 people in our own back room at the Bubble Lounge in San Francisco.

I had to give a speech--usually these things don't really make me nervous, but for some reason, the smaller crowd of peers instead of 'adults' made me a lil' nervous. To top it all off, I didn't have a chance to print out the speech before getting there since I was going to do it on the way, and, as I went to grab my car to drive to kinko's, it wasn't there! Good work Aly, way to get your car towed....

So needless to say I was a little frazzled at the start of the evening. But, in the end, I think it went really well--people seemed pretty moved by the speech (to toot my own horn)-and I even made people laugh once or twice!

So off we go on the way to successfully creating a Professional's Network dedicated to raising money for Cystic Fibrosis.

Here are some pics from the night (apparently my photography skills have gone downhill since I started writing emails for a living):

See What Your Efforts and Funds Can do?

The CF Foundation is doing some amazing things with the money they've raised. They are working on 'Venture Philanthropy' whereby they give a large hunk of money to a pharmaceutical company to research and make lifesaving drugs...Today they give $22 million to FoldRX in Boston--Read this Boston Globe article

So, yes, the money you raise for CF is really going somewhere and will really help!

That's all, I gotta get back to work :)

See you all on Thursday!

What's the Professionals Network?

Here's the idea, get a group of young professionals together, let them schmooze, meet new friends, new potential coworkers; 'network,' shall we say.

But it's better, because not only do you get to meet new people, but you feel good about it, because you all are working towards a similar goal.

Everyone around you has pledged to raise either $500 for a Gold sponsorship or $1000 for a Platinum one towards Cystic Fibrosis.

You'll all see and get to know each other at three events leading up to the big fundraiser. Drinks, good food, speakers, sometimes even a fun present!

Then comes the Stair Climb--which in itself will be a great event....we'll get to that later, mom said I should make my posts shorter b/c when they are long it looks like I don't have anything better to do....Thanks mom.

Interested in Joining the Committee? Post! and also, let me know how I can send you an evite
Interested in the Stair Climb? View our Website

Why people are afraid to fundraise

So I keep missing committee meetings....uh oh.

I'm in DC, and our meeting is in San Francisco...meeting for the first time in person, and I'm having dinner with Dad instead of meeting about the event I'm planning over Goathill pizza...thank goodness for the internet and gchat ;)

So I think a lot of people don't join committees or do fundraising things b/c they think it takes up too much time. Well, it does and it doesn't, and it depends on your level of commitment. This committee has meetings on Monday nights on the phone every two weeks. We'll start being weekly now that we are closing in on events etc.

As for time spent outside of the meetings--well, I played phone-tag with Bubble Lounge, I looked at the menu (let's be honest, that is the fun part), and I made a cool evite....that's not so bad, right? You can do that....

Oh, and now i have these weird websites where i talk about myself and my fundraising efforts in hopes to raise even more money.

You know why else people don't do fundraisers? They feel bad asking for money. Stop that! Seriously, think about it, when someone comes to you and says, can you spare $10 to help cure a lot of kids of a really nasty disease, what do you say? What if they say, hey, come pay a little extra for a drink and save kids with a really nasty disease? You're all over it right?

So translate that into you being the asker--in the end $500 is not that much money to raise, you have 25 friends right? ask them each for 20bucks...how many acquaintances do you have? ask them for 5, see where you get.

Ok, I should maybe go back to work....or, out for happy hour!

I'm not sure i know how to blog

So I never had a blog in the past because I was not sure I'd know what to say. However, now I have a reason for one (not to mention an intern using me as a guinea pig), so I'm going to try. Feel free to keep reading, hopefully I'll figure out how to be entertaining.

The long and short is that I like to raise money for Cystic Fibrosis. When I moved to San Francisco, well scratch that, 6 months after I moved to San Francisco (a girl's gotta get her bearings right?) I connected with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Chapter out here and said I wanted to do something. Did they have a deal for me....a Young Professionals Committee AND a stair climb. Plus, I'd get to host my own events leading up the stair climb. Not a bad deal.

Let's back up though, what is Cystic Fibrosis (CF for short and sixty-five roses for those of you wondering how to pronounce it)?
CF is a genetic disease that effects 70,000 children and adults in the US, it is also the largest genetic killer of children in the US. In 1981, parents of babies diagnosed with CF were told their babies' life expectancy was 18 (it's now 35).

Basically, people with CF have thick sticky mucus. This mucus sits in lungs, making them a breeding ground for bacteria and infection. Additionally (there's me using my Google language), the mucus clogs the ducts of the pancreas, causing digestion trouble and for some, diabetes.

Have I caught your attention yet? Why do I care so much about CF? Well, let's just say a close personal friend of mine has been fighting this disease since she was born. She's exceptionally healthy, in fact, most people say she's healthier than they are, and they don't take 14 pills and at least 4 shots a day.

Not to mention, 90 cents of every dollar given to the CF Foundation goes to research. In the past 10 years, the CF foundation located the defective CF Gene, began work on gene therapy treatments and introduced many life saving and life prolonging treatments.

So now I'm raising money, and I'm trying to reach people like you with a blog, a web page, and a really easy way to donate!

My MBA intern forced me to create a blog as part of her summer project. I thought she was kind of a dumb bunny until she figured out how link my Google pages with my blog.

So here I am forced to write about myself. The end...or the beginnning.

PS Jenn just wrote this first post...the rest is all me!