“A Bend in the Road is Not the End of the Road….Unless You Fail to Make the Turn.” — Helen Keller
Maybe not for you but for Runners Doing Good, it is time to change course and look towards 2021. This year, like it has been for so many, has been a year that has been very trying and fraught with uncertainty.
There were some definite highs. We officially kicked everything off in March with the hope of getting out to a fast start in our fundraising and boy did we. We ended up raising more than $1400 which was all matched so we ended up just short of $3,000 in total for March. That provided us with our best fundraising month ever in the 5 years and 6 campaigns that we’ve run. The last 3-4 days of the month, when Covid-19 was really starting to take hold in Indiana, were our best fundraising days. We were able to scrape together a bit more beyond the end of March, but that’s about where everything ended.
When Ragnar was forced to postpone and then cancel Ragnar Trail Michigan, that really killed anything momentum we had at the time. Without a functioning running team that was working towards training for the event and drawing friends and family members in to support them in this quest to take on something epic, it was very difficult to continue those efforts.
I held onto the idea that we could continue on with running the Fort 4 Fitness and invited others to join the team as part of Team Runners Doing Good with much smaller fundraising requests, etc. and as race after race cancelled, the enthusiasm and any momentum there waned as well. The F4F is still on, for now, but people’s positivity towards running in groups at the moment is pretty minimal.
As I stepped away a few weeks ago and had some time in nature, this year’s campaign has been an underlying thought in the back of my mind. What do I do with it? We have never fallen short. In another year, the accomplishments of March would have lead us considerably farther than where we finished this year but the feeling that it is finally time to face reality has set in.
Is it disappointing? Yes. There’s a lot of this that has been that. Is it failure? I don’t believe so. Our first year, we hoped to raise $1,000 and scratched and clawed as a team to get to $2,250. In our second year, we set a $2,750 goal and finished with over $3,600. In perspective, we eclipsed 2015’s goal and final tally, and 2016’s goal, and only came up less than $600 short of it’s final number…..all in only really 30 good days of fundraising.
It believe that while we’re short of our goal it does show how far we’ve come. This has snowballed in a delightfully surprising way. I never would have ever guessed we’d raise $1,000 much less $3,000 in a year and now in what could be called a “down year”, we raise more than that.
So with the above quote in mind, we’re making the turn towards 2021 with great excitement. It’s exciting to think about a time where hopefully (crossing my fingers) our world may be a healthier place where events with groups of runners can take place, where we’re not quarantined at home, and where hope and optimism reign supreme.
We’re excited for a time where there’s less uncertainty in the world where businesses can embrace charitable activity with less concern for their day to day operations, where families don’t have to worry about whether donating to a cause negatively impacts their household.
2020 has been crazy BUT we’re excited to go big in spreading goodness in 2021. With making this turn in the road towards 2021, it allows us to plan more and to potentially kick off 2021’s campaign sooner. Some of our expenses are already paid for so we’ll need less sponsorship in 2021 to meet those demands.
A special thanks to all of you who have supported NeighborLink Fort Wayne through us this year. We’ve raised more than $3,000 which brings our total for them to more than $10,000 in 2 years of fundraising. That’s something to be proud of even if we wanted to push that much higher. An official total will be issued within the next week when it’s finalized.
Thanks goes to Sami Blair and the Fort 4 Fitness committee for giving us a chance to partner with them in our wristband initiative. I have a strong interest in coming back with that again in the coming year. It’s an idea that I still believe can make an impact for them, NLFW, and Runners Doing Good and I look forward to taking another swing next year.
Lastly, with fewer expenses to cover and more time to plan, expect for us to aim much higher than we have in the past. We’ve never come up short and while that’s not necessarily our fault, we look at those goals as a promise, and the goal in 2021 will be to grow this in a much bigger and bolder way, making up for what we couldn’t this year.
2021 is going to be exciting! Who’s with us?!?!
“If You Aim Higher Than You Expect, You Could Reach Higher Than You Dreamed.” — Richard Branson
Runners Doing Good 