Most of us have the experience of being approached by someone, sometimes a stranger, asking us to make a donation to some charity.

From where I grew up, this can take various forms. It may be a teenager in school uniform shoving a metal can in front of your face on a Saturday morning, mumbling something about “donating to charity” without making eye contact with you. It may take place in the office, where a a co-worker passes around an envelope and some sort of a card, perhaps on behalf of his/her child, and it is understood that the fact that you have been passed the envelope and the card implies that your monetary donation is being solicited. It may also take the form of an all-time-favourite, arguably, of celebrities performing gravity-defying acts in TV charity programmes, appealing to viewers to make phone calls to some designated numbers and make donations.

I have found myself in the first two situations before, as the soliciting party. As far as I can remember, they were never voluntary. Those were mainly activities organised by my school when I was still a student and we all simply had to take part. I still remember a time when every student in my entire class were handed a little envelope and a pledge card and our job was to get the pledge card filled with names, and more importantly, the little envelope filled with cash.

I have made donations before, in response to TV charity shows. And recently, I just signed myself up to be kind of the TV celebrities equivalent. Like the TV idols who perform some physically challenging gigs and ask people to donate money, I will also be doing something physically challenging and helping to raise funds for a charity. Only this time, I am doing it voluntarily.

This is what I am doing. I am running the Chicago Marathon in October, and I am participating in the marathon as part of the team of a charity organisation, called Asha for Education. As part of their team, I am helping them raise funds in the weeks leading up to the race. So, apart from my usual training, I am also going around asking for people to support me and the charity by donating money.

Charity organisations recruiting runners to take part in races while raising funds for them is very commonly seen in the US. How it typically works is that the charity will have a number of entries to the race. They offer these entries to runners together with a training program to prepare them for the race. In return, the runners do their part by helping the charity raise funds, the targeted amount of which is set by the charity.

I have been aware of such fund raising programs before, but I never thought I would be taking part in one myself. The idea of going around, asking people for money sounded rather daunting to me. I thought of those scenarios I described earlier where somebody goes around trying to raise funds. How much do people really care? When I say “people”, I mean both the fund raisers and those he/she approaches. I can easily book a place in the race through any charity and all of them support a worthy cause. How much will it drive me to make the effort to raise the funds for them? To the donors, what is it about the charity and its cause that makes it worthwhile for them to make a donation? Not to forget that they are also approached by your Saturday student, the person passing the envelope and pledge card around, your tireless TV celebrities and many more.

As I was seeking to enter the Chicago Marathon, I got to know that the Chicago Chapter of Asha for Education has formed a fund racing and running team for the race. Asha for Education is a non-profit organisation that does work in India to bring education to children who would otherwise not have the means. Quoting from their website, they are “a secular organization dedicated to change in India by focusing on basic education in the belief that education is a critical requisite for socio-economic change”.

It may sound magical, but my opinion on joining a fund raising team to take part in Chicago changed. I shall not go into my love story with India, except that I have traveled to India many times when I was based in Asia, I am missing India, and I still want to go back. If I wanted to run with a charity team, Asha would be my best choice because of their work that affect the lives of children in India.

I began to find out more about what Asha does and what sort of commitment I would need to make if I were to join their team for Chicago. I was comfortable with the work that they do in India, but one of my main concern was whether or not I would be able to meet my fund raising goal, which is $1,200. I thought of how much (little?) money I used to put into those little envelopes that I received. At that rate, I probably need hundreds of people to donate before I can reach my goal.

On second thoughts, that was me when I had less earning power or when I was a student. I saw from some materials from Asha that the average amount of funding to support a child’s education for one year is around $180. Today, I do spend some money on certain expensive toys. I have blogged about some of them before, such as this and this, and recently I have acquired this as well:

Furthermore, I am also contemplating on getting this:

image from www.infoworld.com

If a person has decided to support a cause, I believe setting aside a portion of money out of what is usually spent on expensive hobbies should not be asking too much of that person. The cost of some of those items above can easily support a few children going by the average rate I saw.

This time, I am getting involved in fund raising to give it a try. After all, all the years of plain talk and plain thoughts of getting involved in charity have no results at all until action is really taken. I hope I can rally the support of my friends to raise funds for Asha.