Oh my god, someone wanted to do a recreational activity for personal enjoyment! What a complete selfish asshole!
I feel like such a jerk – last night I went jogging and I didn’t raise money for ANYONE. And tomorrow I might play golf, but the only money I plan to give out might be $5 for the kid who cleans my clubs after the round! I sure hope he has autism, TB, or some other disease so my recreational time will meet with your approval, and I won’t be subjected to such scorn.
[QUOTE= panache45]
So sorry your “fun run” turned out to be a disappointment. Having AIDS is a disappointment too. And I’m sorry if my reaction is somewhat over the top, but it sure looks like this whole thing is all about you and your self-serving priorities. Even if I were in your position and didn’t know about the $400, I never would have brought this to the Pit.
[/QUOTE]
Your reaction is indeed over the top. And I don’t even know what you’re trying to get at here. And what do you mean “I never would have brought this to the Pit?” Does being a nonprofit somehow exempt an organization from scorn? Is there a bar to the Pit over which outrage must jump?
Get over yourself. When I pay an entry fee, I expect to be able to enter. Not having read the fine print is my own fault, but this is a damn message board.
And it’s not even run by lepers, so it’s not like your conscience is requiring you to read every word on it.
bolding mine.
thats not some kinda secret code is it ? 
The entry fee covers the cost of supplies for the race such as the timing chip that goes on your race number, the other paperwork you get and you also get a t-shirt. There are other costs associated with the event such as bringing in water, cups, printing of bag check labels and tags.
Right now for the 2013 event, the registration fee is only 10 bucks and this is what it says on the registration page now…
Registered participants commit to raising a minimum of $400 for AIDS Project Los Angeles to participate in Concrete Hero on July 14, 2013. Please note: your credit card will not be charged this amount. This is just the minimum required to participate in Concrete Hero.
This is the first event of this type that APLA has put on so cut them a little slack while they work out the kinks.
If there wasn’t a charge to do the event, you would have 1,000 people show up to the event and there is now way that this event would have been able to have supported that many people with the volunteers they had. I ran the race and it was fun! There were all kinds of obstacles like monkey bars over water, running hurdles over busted up cars, climbing up and over a school bus covered in rope ladders, jumping over multiple lines of fire, climbing up and over trash bins, up and over hurdles and scaling a 3 story high stack of containers (like on the back of semi-trucks) The event has to be fun or people won’t show up.
One of the other posters was right, this is not meant to be a fun thing to do on a Sunday. The focus is to raise money. If you don’t want to raise money, don’t do the event and go to a park and play on the swings for free.
The other thing is that you have up to 60 days to come up with $400 using the delayed self-pledge feature so you could have done the race, then use the extra 60 days to raise money.
The person or “coach” on the phone could have refunded your reg fee if you felt you were misled in any way. I think you were too upset with them calling you at work. You could have also told them not to call you and they would have put you on their do not call list. All you had to do was ask.
This is the first time I have done a race and had to raise money and I didn’t feel bad asking friends and family since I have been supporting everybody elses causes for the last 30 years.
You have to remember that APLA does allot of good and many people love to support a good cause. It’s like anything else, if you don’t ask for money, you won’t get it and it’s amazing how giving people are. You have a perception that asking people for money is evil. It is if you ask the same people 4 times a year but once every few years isn’t a big deal.
In summary, your entrance fee alone would not have covered the cost for you to do this event. I would pay an easy $75 - $100 fee just to run the course again… it was that much fun. It also took about 12 hrs to break down the event… and clean up everything… and this was all done by volunteers.
So.
Charge.
More.
Or offer an option–raise $400 by telemarketing your loved ones or just pay $100 up front.
I won’t telemarket. I won’t call my friends and family asking them to donate money. I certainly won’t ask them to give money (and, necessarily, contact info) to an organization that so fundamentally damaged as to not realize that one doesn’t spam-call a participant’s workplace.
Frankly, there are a lot of worthy organizations that raise money for AIDS. I’ll give to one that didn’t apparently take Amway as their business model.
The goal isn’t to have as many people participate as possible, although that is a good benefit. The goal is to raise money. With a limited number of participants, you want to maximize the money you can raise from each one. Covering the costs is good, raising more money is better.
It’s clear that this type of event isn’t for everyone. But since there are lots of Tough Mudder type events out there to choose from, and lots of other ways to contribute to AIDS research, I don’t think they’re obliged to accommodate everyone who wants to participate.
A lot of friends participate in the Pan Mass Challenge, a fundraising bike ride for cancer research. From their “About” page:
For the two day ride, the minimum fundraising amount is $3500 and they are full every year.
The option to “fundraise” from yourself is always there. No one says the donation must come from someone else.
Well, obviously there is a calculation that has been done that says "We need to ask for $400.00 minimum to make the event a success. I said $100.00 but I have no clue how much it costs to put on this event.
Sure they could put on an event where you run a 5K around a track at a high school but how much fun would that be? Then they could charge a 5 buck entry fee and call it a day. Fundraisers have to make the events interesting otherwise they won’t get the current participants to register for next years event.
Then make the entry fee 400 bucks.
Fallacy of the excluded middle.
I do not for an instant think that Concrete Hero costs more to put on than Tough Mudder. If you charged double what TM charges and admitted half the number of people, you’d have your money and your participants.
OR, if you opened up a limited number of slots to the top x number of fundraisers, you’d have your money and a finite, manageable number of participants.
Of course, those ideas and the others like them require a little more work on the organizers’ part, without subcontracting it out to the participants.
I fail to see why Concrete Hero needs to charge a fee to FUNDRAISERS. Now, I can understand if CH has put together a fundraising package, and wants to sell this package. However, calling this fee an entry fee seems to be misleading, whether or not the fine print says that paying the fee will only allow the payer to raise funds, and not otherwise participate.
I think that the people who organized this will see far fewer people next year, precisely because of this.
Correct me if I’m wrong but you’re just a participant in the race – you’re not one of the organizers?
Then, as others have said, you charge as an entry fee the amount that it costs to cover the race. If there are volunteers working on the basis that they’re helping raise money (by not charging for their time) then add what they would have cost onto the entry fee and make it an automatic donation. Be upfront and explicit about this when people register.
Make sure your funding scales correctly as numbers increase. Have a registration deadline to make sure you have time to get the people there to support the runners. If it’s way over-subscribed you can have some sort of backup plan.
Encourage and support people to spread the word and raise as much money as possible. But don’t force them. Any don’t deduct money from that fund to pay for the organization of the event unless it’s made 100% explicitly clear to everyone involved (even at several steps removed).
Everything else just seems faintly scammy. I’m willing to put it down to stupidity but given the choice, based on this thread, I’d find some other way to contribute to the cause. So well done with that.
SD
Pretty much all major fundraising athletic events work this way. That way they can separate from the event expenses. I realize that some of you aren’t familiar with this but it seems to be pretty standard practice. This AIDS Project LA event isn’t doing something out of line with the rest of the athletic fundraising world.
I was dimly aware that the bigger things (like walking the great wall) some of the donated money must go to costs somehow. But I guess I always figured that when I sponsored someone a few bucks to do something for some charity that the entirety of my money was going to that cause.
I know that charities have overheads too, and that only a percent makes it to the actual cause (sometimes a shockingly low percentage). Yeah, I know it doesn’t make some sense not expect the same.
I guess these things must raise more cash than other methods but I’d bet you a donut that 90+% of the people donating to each of those $400 targets think all their money is going to the cause.
Given the target is $400, how much is donated and how much is expenses? And why not just be upfront about it all.
SD
Well, for example, in the Pan-Mass Challenge that I linked to upthread the percentage of donations that go to cancer research is 100%. All expenses are paid for by the entry fee and donated services. I can’t speak for this particular event, but my guess is that is their goal.
Well, no, but you do need to raise at least $150 to participate in the pit; it’s written in microscopic text in the dot on the second ‘i’ in the user agreement.
I’m sure you understand, and it’s all for a good cause, after all!
Why does anybody CARE what the event charges, or how they go about collecting it?
If you don’t WANT to fundraise, fucking don’t. Don’t sign up. Go run around the fucking park, or as has been pointed out, there are plenty of other events you can do.
There are apparently enough people who DO feel like it’s something they care about enough that they are willing to put the effort into collecting money or ponying up their own.
In fact, it would be interesteing to know how many participants simply wrote a $400 check.
Me, I could give shit what charity the race I’m running in is for (assuming there is one). I consider it a fun time, and view it as a long, strenuous shopping trip for a $40 - $70 shirt.
Snagging customers with technicalities and using misleading wording are the kind of underhanded tricks I normally associate with sleazebag marketers. Yes, it’s perfectly legal. That’s the bare minimum. I’d expect an ethical business to have much higher standards than that, much less a CHARITY.
A charity depends on willing support. It needs goodwill. Anything that kills goodwill is simply not acceptable. Hell, refund the money just so you can tell everyone how good and honest your organization is. (Companies used to do this all the time, what happened?)
Stupid, stupid move on the part of Concrete Hero. It’s going to lose a lot of support over this. Hell, it better lose a lot of support over this.
Oh, one more thing, and I’m asking this in all seriousness. Would it be possible for Happy Scrappy Hero Pup to run alongside the course as a symbolic protest? Could the charity stop this?
[QUOTE= Sicks Ate]
If you don’t WANT to fundraise, fucking don’t. Don’t sign up. Go run around the fucking park, or as has been pointed out, there are plenty of other events you can do.
[/QUOTE]
Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? Of course, it would have been easier to be cool with “fucking don’t” before I thought I had paid my entry fee to, you know, enter.
[QUOTE= Sicks Ate]
Me, I could give shit what charity the race I’m running in is for (assuming there is one). I consider it a fun time, and view it as a long, strenuous shopping trip for a $40 - $70 shirt.
[/QUOTE]
Sure, but I’d pay $35 or even $50 (heck, I’ve paid $150) pr a t-shirt. But nobody hid the price from me.
[QUOTE= DKW]
Oh, one more thing, and I’m asking this in all seriousness. Would it be possible for Happy Scrappy Hero Pup to run alongside the course as a symbolic protest? Could the charity stop this?
[/QUOTE]
Probably not (and why would I), and almost certainly.
As has been pointed out it’s not hidden. Your fault for filling in the blanks and clicking ‘ok’.
Quit signing up for races drunk. It’s dangerous.
Gawd yes on this. The charity thing for sure.
And like you said the whole company thing. When did we go from “do everything to make the customer happy” to “lets do everything we can to fuck em over and maybe they won’t notice”? 