Foo - What's a good way to raise money that isn't cheesy?

One of my big goals for the future is to set up a charity (which shall remain anonymous) ride. I think I'll start out with a small century, but my ultimate goal would be to have a longer, more tour-like ride, with the ultimate dream goal being a ride across the country.

I don't want the ride itself to be overly charitized, if that's a word. What I mean is that I'm just going to charge people to come ride and donate whatever profits I would come up with from entry fees. I want the ride to just feel like a ride, not like some super do-gooder event. I think people can kind of pat themselves on the back too much in events like this.

Anyway, as an added thing I would like to do more of a fundraiser after the ride. My eventual goal for the tour thing would be for a small group of us to ride to our destination, educate people about our cause, and then start the fundraiser.

What kind of fundraiser would be good? I want something that can make money, but I don't want it to be cheesy like a bake sale or something like that. A raffle would be kind of cool if the prize was large enough, but that would be risky if not enough people showed up or bought tickets. A sponsor could give us the thing to raffle, but that's also difficult and complicated.

I kind of want it to be something that people would pay to do anyway. It would be really cool to have a concert or something like that, but again, that would be difficult and complicated.

Anybody else have ideas?

Well you gotta WORK a fundraiser. It's easy to get donations. All you have to do is write letters on company letter head (so it is a write of for the donator) explaining your cause and more than likely you will get donations. If for some reason people don't show up and there are prizes left over, return them to the donator. Be sure to write thank you letters to each person or company that donates.

For a concert, you can ask a local school band or a young group just starting out to perform for you. Give them enough notice so that every band member can make it since they most likely are students with busy lives. It would be great exposure for the school district to show off what the students are doing and fantastic for the "garage band" to see if they are going in the right direction with their performance.

This really should not be so complicated. We have at least two fundraisers a year and it's smooth sailing. Takes about a week to organize and another few days (about 2 or 3 weeks before the event) to verify.

Good luck to you

There was a biking magazine several months ago that addresses this very subject. I don't remember which one or what month, but it was a good article. I don't know if you could google this or not.