The first year Diamond and Schmitt Architects participated in the Ride for Heart as a corporate team, my intention was to simply donate to our team’s efforts. However, the circumstances at the time surrounding a particular little boy inspired me to do more than just donate. Despite the fact that I didn’t own a bike and hadn’t ridden a bike in close to 15 years, I realized I could make a larger contribution by participating, so I signed myself up for the ride.

I knew I wanted to be a VIP, and arbitrarily set my goal at $2500.00. However, after attending the Ride for Heart VIP Rally and meeting such inspirational people, I realized I needed to re-evaluate my goal. I wanted to raise as much as I could in support of the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the day after the VIP Rally I revised my goal to $7500.00, but ended up raising over $9000.00 in support of the Heart and Stroke Foundation individually.

I’ve been asked over and over how I achieved above and beyond my goal.

Simple: I thought of how I could fundraise most effectively and came to the conclusion that what people liked was to receive a personalized e-mail rather than a group e-mail. Here’s what I did to make my “asks” personal:

• I prepared a template e-mail and sent it out to various individuals.

• I prepared a spreadsheet and kept track of who I sent e-mails to and crossed them out once they donated.

• Every couple of weeks I would prepare a new e-mail template and send out reminder e-mails, and at times add new people to my distribution list.

• I also had a template e-mail set up to thank those who donated.

• Once a donation was received I would use that template and send out a personalized thank you.

• During my fundraising efforts, I came across a lot of individuals who were uneasy providing credit card numbers online. To remedy this, once I received their donations, I would process those donations online using my credit card. In total I contacted about 230 individuals and received donations from about 130 including a very generous donation from Diamond and Schmitt Architects.