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mattabbotts
03-10-2008, 20:10
Hey Everyone,

I have been planning my '08 thru hike for a few years now and am super excited. About a month or so ago a friend of mine asked me if I would be willing to use my hike as a means of fundraising and spreading the word about a disease his father has been diagnosed with. The disease is metachromatic leukodystrophy and affects the central nervous system causing loss of acquired functions, paralysis, blindness, seizures and eventually death.

I agreed to use my dream of hiking the trail to help other people. We are offering people the opportunity to sponsor miles of the hike and we have some merchandise available.

I don't want to push my causes on people so don't feel any pressure to help out but if you can and are interested please check out our website at www.at4mld.org. If you can't help out monetarily we understand, we are as broke as you, but if you still want to help out just tell someone about our site.

Thanks a ton for reading this. Happy hiking everyone and for all the class of '08 I hope to see you on the trail

Peace,
Matt

Pacific Tortuga
03-10-2008, 21:53
Awareness hikes are cool but its real hard trying to fundraise. Not that it hasn't been done and your cause's and friends dad are not noble.
I wish you the best and gods speed to your friends pop. I'd say focus on your journey and other things will fall in place, enjoy the Trail.

mattabbotts
03-10-2008, 23:06
Thanks, I appreciate the support. My role in the thing is pretty much to hike so I am pretty well focused and really excited to leave next friday. My friend is taking care of all the details. We have big dreams and realistic expectations with the fund raising but every bit helps.

Again thanks, and happy hiking

jesse
03-11-2008, 00:00
You need to be transparent. Are people going to be asked to make contributions directly to the charity? Are you going to pay your expenses, from money collected?

Appalachian Tater
03-11-2008, 00:35
Yeah, it's fine if you ask people to donate to a bona fide registered charitable organization and their donations are tax-deductible. It's another thing if you want to pay for your hike and then donate what's left to charity. The latter is a bad thing and might even be considered fraudulent and illegal unless you're up front about that.

Your website says that 100% of any money will go to research, but I don't see anything more specific than that. For all someone looking at your website can tell, the money donated will go to pay for your graduate classes in neuro histology.

You might want to discuss this with a knowledgeable lawyer or contact your state attorney general's office unless you are collecting from people in different states, then it might even be a federal matter. You don't want to get in legal trouble for trying to do a good deed. Since you are using a .edu address, that might compound the problems.

Also, it doesn't make sense that you are collecting the money now in a mile-sponsorship model when only 25% or so of thru-hikers finish their thru-hike.

mattabbotts
03-11-2008, 09:13
Thanks, those are really good suggestions and stuff I hadn't thought of. This is my first time doing something like this so it's all new. All the money we get goes to another foundation, which is an official NPO and will donate all of it to research at Duke University. Nothing goes to paying for the hike, that's all on my shoulders, as it should be. The hike was my real plan and helping the charity just came along at the end and seemed like a positive opportunity. I haven't really looked into what Duke does with it because as I said before my role in the thing pretty much involves hiking. I realize that only 25% of hikers make it the whole way but I think it is foolish to plan for failure I can't really see people getting upset for donate money to a good cause and me failing at the hike.

But thank you for the ideas, these are all really good and I will pass them along to my friend and we will be a little clearer on what we are trying to do.