For the fourth year in a row I’m excited to say I’ve hit my minimum fundraising goal for this year’s Tour campaign! After taking Lenore’s advice and doing some targeted outreach to folks in my network, I saw a sudden rush of donations–nearly $1,000 in the last three days!–that pushed me over the top and beyond.

But the work doesn’t stop there! As relieved as I am to have reached the minimum to qualify for the ride, I’m equally excited to see how many more dollars I can pull in for the ACF in these final few weeks before the event.

While last year’s campaign was challenging due to my being off on a career break, which meant no more corporate support, this year I faced a different challenge: far less time and energy to dedicate to fundraising activities, combined with the fact that Lenore and I were now splitting a donor pool.

As a result, we had to be a little smarter this year. The first key was taking full advantage of matches. For those not aware, there’s usually a couple of times during the fundraising campaign when corporate sponsors pop up to offer donation matches up to some total cap. These match programs usually burn out very fast–often in less than an hour–so catching those waves requires paying good attention to announcement emails and fast fingers get those donations in while there’s still money available.

Fortunately, we were able to make good use of two matches (so far), both by self-donating and activating our network, resulting in $1,000 for both Lenore and I.

As for the rest, well, that just requires good ol’ elbow grease and sometimes a bit of creativity. But like last year I was once again amazed and humbled by so many people who were willing and able to support our effort. After four years participating in the Tour, I was worried I might have started to exhaust my donor network, but it turns out those fears were completely unwarranted. Thank you so much to everyone who donated this year, and a particular shout-out to those folks who’ve contributed year after year. Your inexhaustible generosity is truly inspiring!

Of course there’s still just shy of four weeks left until the big weekend and we have plenty of work left ahead of us.

For folks who haven’t yet had a chance to donate, you can still get in on my sock raffle!

As for us, it’s simple: ride ride ride!