When I joined Asha biking program, I was very skeptical about raising 1000$! Most of the bikers in the program have the option of doing company matching to double their contributions. I had very less expectations on raising funds from my work place – considering I work at a non-profit and filled with hardworking grad students :). Thanks to TA FR event organized by biking coords because they gave the idea of selling homemade cookies/cakes at workplace to raise funds.

I sent out couple of emails to my dept explaining about Asha training prog and the cause. Although not many were interested in reading long emails, they still came for the luncheon because it was home cooked meal and Indian food :). My dear husband helped me in cooking almost a full course meal – spicy mango salad, aloo fries, garlic noodles, chole, jeera rice and masala chai 🙂 one of my close friends made home made chocolate chip cookies for me!

Recommended donation amount for full course meal was about 15$ and main course was 10$. I didn’t have too much hopes that people would come and I didn’t ask them to RSVP because it wasn’t a very big event. We cooked for about 20-22 people hoping we won’t have too much leftovers! We may have invested less than 50$ for this whole event and about 4hours of cooking/cleaning and packing – but it’s totally worth it! I was amazed how people are willing to donate because it is for a great cause.

I printed out labels for all food items including ingredients and also printed out some project flyers so people can read about it while they eat. Surprisingly, the whole lunch event was a great success – there was no food left and people donated about 400$ in total :). It was all in the range of 10-25$ but many people donated so it adds up (just like Bernie Sanders campaign ;)). I had borrowed Asha’s square device in case people didn’t have cash to pay. I also had a QR code generated and printed which would redirect to my FR page – for direct online donations. Some people donated cash which I got company matched.

Other thing I felt is – people don’t read mass emails – It’s always better to email or message friends individually to get a better response! One evening was spent in reaching out to all my friends on FB and email and within 48hours, I got around 400$ donation :).

Here are some pics from the luncheon and my training