Raising $10,000,000 for Leukemia

For the last several weeks we’ve (Adria and I) been working on a new business plan. It won’t make us any money. It will hopefully raise at least 10 million dollars for Cancer Research and Family Support though, it’s called Run for Leukemia.

To raise such a significant amount of money, Run for Leukemia will have to do something completely over the top, seemingly impossible and possibly insane.

Here’s the gist of the plan:

Run for Leukemia will start at Disney Land and run across the country to Vermont. Then we’ll run down the Eastern seaboard to Disney World.

Yes, Run.

I’ll be doing the running – 20 miles a day, 5 days a week for one year to be exact.

Over the past two years, while Serenity has been dealing with Leukemia, we’ve been itching to be able to do something significant to support Leukemia research and to help support the non-profits who provide help to Cancer Families. Running across the country to raise money for charity has been before, but we think that by treating it as a business we’ve figured out how to raise a significant amount of money while doing it.

The key is in the organization. We will have about 20 paid staffers who’s job is specifically to setup, organize and fully prepare fundraising events with local schools as we move across the country. They will work several months ahead of us contacting schools and working with them to do a fundraiser, once the schools have agreed, they’ll work with the local community to put on a big event and invite local fire departments, police departments, city and state dignitaries, hospitals, athletic team members and local celebrities. Most importantly, they’ll work with local media to have the events heavily covered.

The event highlight will consist of the school kids talking about how much they were able to raise and having them present the funds to local Cancer Families and Run for Leukemia. To be successful at raising $10 million, Run for Leukemia will need to put on 200 of these events across the country that raise $50,000 each. We plan to put on 250. The bulk of that $50k will be raised by selling local businesses sponsorship banners that the event will take place in front of. There are several other things we’ll be doing along the way to raise money and national media attention as well.

The entire family will be with me on the road for the year along with several paid staff members. We’ll be caravaning with 3 travel trailers and 5 trucks with campers. All of them will be wrapped with ads, essentially creating a group of moving billboards that will slowly move across and down the country for a year and will be the backdrop of all the events and interviews we do along the way. We plan to finance the trip by selling ad space on those vehicles.

We’ll be raising money for the following organizations: CureSearch (they fund research for children’s leukemia), Make A Wish Foundation, HopeKids and the Christmas for Children with Cancer Foundation. All of these organizations have had a significant impact on our lives and in supporting Serenity through her treatment.

I’m really excited about this! It will be a tough, grueling year but it’ll be totally worth it!

This is just a summary of a large business plan we’ve put together, we’re at the stage of beginning to execute on that plan by looking for advertisers who are interested in having a cross country billboard for a year. If you know of any companies that might be interested, please let us know!

We’ve just started a Facebook page, there’s not much there yet but we’re working on it. If you like this idea, please click the like button below!