Downturn Slows Elite Charity Events
Boston, March 20, 2009, The Boston Globe — To raise enough money to participate in the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, a two-day charity bike trip across Massachusetts, Rachel Gabriel started an unusual fund-raising event of her own, an evening of belly dancing performances. Her "Shimmy Fund" raised nearly $4,700 last year for the Jimmy Fund and put her in the Pan-Mass Challenge.
But this year she got nervous when some of the belly dancers told her they could not afford to donate private lessons as raffle prizes.
"That's when we started thinking maybe we should scale back a little bit because the economy is bad," said Gabriel, 41, an engineer from Lunenburg.
Rather than committing to raise $4,200, which she would be obligated to pay whether or not she collected that much in pledges, she is taking a shortcut, pledging $3,400 for a shorter Pan-Mass Challenge route that ends in Wellesley.
"It's a huge time commitment for training," Gabriel said. "But it's also a huge financial commitment."
Elite fund-raising events like the Pan-Mass Challenge inspire thousands of athletes and weekend warriors to enlist in a training regime and a fund-raising plan for a good cause. But with the squeezed economy pinching so many pockets, some participants are being scared off by the steep fund-raising requirements and recoiling from warnings that their credit cards will be charged if they cannot meet their pledge commitments.
Registration for the Pan-Mass Challenge is down 10 percent this year, and coordinators are promoting shorter routes with lower fund-raising thresholds.
Other walkathons that have no minimum pledge are trying to draw more participants, anticipating that each one will have less to contribute.
"We're definitely bracing for the worst," said Kelly Gaule, director of development for the AIDS Action Committee, which produces AIDS Walk Boston, an event that drew more than 15,000 people and raised nearly $1.2 million last year. "What we're doing is working diligently to raise the number of participants. If we went status quo with what we've done in the past, we would see a decrease in donations."
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Team in Training program - which helps athletes who raise money for blood cancer to train for a marathon, half-marathon, triathlon, hike, or 100-mile bike ride - said contributions are still coming, but in lower numbers.
"Right now it's about reaching out to more people," said campaign manager Caroline Hanna. "More people are giving. It's just that people are giving less of a dollar amount."
It's too early to tell whether walkers will again flock to the May 16 Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, a two-day marathon-length journey that requires an $1,800 fund-raising pledge, said Eloise Caggiano, program director.
"People have more questions this year because of the economy," Caggiano said. "They're worried about meeting the fund-raising commitment. They ask a lot of questions about 'what happens if I don't raise the money? I don't think I can raise the money.' We're just spending more time with everybody and making sure they feel comfortable before they register with us."
The Avon Walk, which raised $6.9 million last year in Boston, is responding by offering more tips for low-dollar fund-raising and one unorthodox incentive: The top fund-raiser at each of the nine walkathons will get to travel to Daytona, Fla., and meet actor Patrick Dempsey (McDreamy to viewers of the ABC show "Grey's Anatomy").
One old favorite, the Boston Marathon, has apparently not been touched by the recession. Some 1,300 runners who might not otherwise qualify for the marathon will be running for charities and have committed to raise $3,000 each for them, said a Boston Athletic Association spokesman Jack Fleming. It remains to be seen whether they can raise more.
The Pan-Mass Challenge hopes that registration for the Aug. 1 event will pick up as the weather warms and more bicyclists return to the roads. Though the event's 190-mile route from Sturbridge to Provincetown is typically sold out by this time of year, a few hundred spots remain open, said spokeswoman Jackie Herskovitz.
Coordinators are promoting a one-day Wellesley route, a 47-mile jaunt that requires a fund-raising commitment of just $1,000. Also, for the first time, the age requirement will be lowered from 15 to 13 to encourage families to ride.
"We're just trying to hedge our bets and do what we can to increase fund-raising," said Herskovitz. "We don't want our fund-raising to drop."
Interest in the Pan-Mass Challenge has exploded in recent years, boosting contributions from just $12.5 million in 2000 to $35 million last year. But the bar for entry has also increased over time, from a $3,600 fund-raising minimum in 2007 to $4,200 this year.
In a recent e-mail to past riders, founder Billy Starr tried to rally the troops and acknowledge their economic concerns.
"I understand that this is an extraordinarily difficult time and that people are now both reluctant to 'commit' and to ask others to support their endeavor," he wrote. "Nonetheless, cancer remains a plague, and this is no time to back off our efforts."
Chris Walsh, a 46-year-old salesman, acknowledged that "it does get more difficult every year to make the minimums."
Nonetheless, he raises between $5,000 and $8,000 a year for the Pan-Mass Challenge, Walsh said. "I've been fortunate because I've been haunting people for 15 years."
He has a friend who is afraid to commit to the full Pan-Mass route this year because of the fund-raising commitment.
But Walsh is not going away. He met his wife, a recruiter of platelet donors, when he was at Dana-Farber donating, and he has vowed to do the Pan-Mass ride 25 times.
"In the end, whether the economy is good or bad, people are dying of cancer," he said. "I look at it as, as bad as things may be in the economy . . . I've got my health."
