Westside LA Team In Training - Summer 2009 Marathon & Half Marathon Team

Archive for the ‘online’ Category

More from the LLS YouTube, “LLSpotlight – Leukemia – Where We Are Today”

Thank you for your feedback, and we’ve now created an additional Events Calendar to help separate our team events from participants’ fundraising events. It’s also located at the navigation bar above. You will get a better bird’s eye view of everything that is happening. It’s pretty exciting to see the calendar filling up! Remember, e-mail our Fundraising Captain, Erin Shulsinger, so you can get added to her e-mail and this Calendar.

If you’re not on the Team, we hope to see you at one of these events!

View the Events Calendar

It’s so AMAZING we have so many events lined up this early in the season! We’ll assume you’re already done with event logistical planning, and you need to get your event known to everyone. What do you do? Of course, the obvious is to tell all your friends and family. How? Is that enough? There’s never enough! We’ve compiled a list to the top places to go to post your event and get the buzz going!

First e-mail our Fundraising Captain, Erin Shulsinger, so your event could be added to her weekly HOT EVENTS e-mail to our internal team. Try not to conflict event dates unless your target audiences are completely different.

Event Invite Systems

• Evite.com
• Facebook Events
• MySpace Events

More Event Listings
The following are good supplemental event systems to get many people outside of your circle aware of the event. People might run into your event on several sites and become constantly reminded of it.

• Going.com
• Upcoming.com
• The Scene
• My Modern Met
• Experience LA
• Eventful
• Culture Mob

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For some of you, recommitment is around the corner. I’ve been approached by some participants about some unique and exciting ideas for fundraising. Most of my ideas come from researching other TNT fundraising pages outside of LA, checking out fundraising forums, and researching how other nonprofit organizations fundraise. The information is definitely out there, but the tough part is figuring out where to look.

A great resource for fundraising ideas are various Team In Training related and running forums. Skimming through some of the following forums, I already picked up some unique and exciting ideas such as bowling nights, magnets, buttons, having a table at an auto dealership, gift card fundraisers, restaurant revenue shares, local business reviews, and much much more.

Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Community Forums
This is the official Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Fundraising Forum for Team in Training. This is HIGHLY recommended, and contains a lot of valuable fundraising information.

Facebook Team in Training Group Forums
This is a great resource for fundraising knowledge sharing from experienced and new Team in Training members. It seems to be updated with new topics and replies frequently, and reading some of the old archives are very helpful too.

MySpace Team in Training Group Forums
Topic threads don’t go very deep, but there’s pages and pages of topics which you can read through for many ideas.

Active Running Community – Fundraising Topic
This forum isn’t a Team in Training focused page, but you can use the same ideas and techniques from other nonprofit organizations. Not much going on here, but archives can also give you some great ideas.

You really have to take the time to read through some. I encourage you to also participate and contribute. Network with other TNT participants and alumni, meet some new friends, share ideas!

This site now utilizes Facebook Connect. What does that mean? Without being too technical, it allows us to integrate Facebook features. Like what? Well, you don’t need to re-register or keep filling out your name and e-mail on this site each time you want to comment. It’s one less username/password to remember. You just have to click on “Connect” on the lower part of the 2nd column of this site (see the facebook logo?), and login with your existing account.

You can also invite people from your Facebook friends list to come check out our site. You can tell them how great this Team is! As you can see in the Facebook Connect area, your profile pic and information will be posted for other TNT to find and connect with you. We’ve added this feature to make this site a little more interactive and fun.

One feature that seems to be buggy at the moment is being able to post your comment activity to your Facebook News Feed. Everything else seems to work. Please let us know if you come across any weird issues. Also, if you want to be a contributor for the blog section, just let us know too!

Please note: By connecting to Facebook on our site, it may leave you still connected to Facebook after you leave our site, so please be aware of your login sessions in and out of our website.

Let me tell you about my experience last summer season using Twitter. First, if you don’t know what Twitter is please watch this video first

I started a Twitter account about a year ago because too many interesting things were happening in my life that I wanted to document instantly. Twitter allowed me to do so because there were so many ways to update it, via text message, online through my phone, my laptop, and through various websites. Since I was starting my 3rd TNT season, I thought it would be a good way to let my friends & family know what’s going on with my training, and also my life. So I sent everyone my Twitter address (http://www.twitter.com/sketch678) so they could follow what’s up.

Throughout the season they would see my updates, from “We just ran 12 miles!”, “We’re eating a good breakfast at The Firehouse with my new teammates”, “Please donate to my page [link]“, “We’re having a fundraiser tonight! Come out!” to “7am is sooo early! I’m barely half awake!”. It was a fun way for my friends to see what I was going through. I also had Twitter followers whom I haven’t met in person, but were very encouraging throughout the season.

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Most of us will go into the LLS eFundraising Admin area (where you go to update your TNT fundraising page) and not notice certain features. We most likely just check who donated, or edit our fundraising page with a weekly update or photo. Have you clicked on the “Fundraising Tips” tab to the left of “Personalize Pages”? There’s a simple widget on there in which you can scroll through different fundraising ideas.

Here’s one that I didn’t know about:
“Three times a year, Whole Foods will hold “5% Days” (or Community giving Days). They will donate 5% of that day’s total sales to a local non-profit organization. Contact the Marketing Director at the nearest Whole Foods Market.”

Did you know that?

Log in to LLS eFundraising and check it out for yourself!