I quickly discovered that the AF puts on fundraising walks all over the country to help raise funds for research, education, and community programs. I was stoked to find out that we had two in our area, and that one was taking place just 15 minutes from our home! So, in February 2011 we formed Team Esella and signed up for our first Arthritis Walk.
I was really hoping that I could get 10 people to join, and my goal was to raise $1000
Well....it didn't exactly go as planned.
We ended up having over 45 team members and we ended up raising, in just 11 weeks,
$17,372 dollars!!
We NEVER imagined that we would raise $5000, let alone over $17,000.
We have been asked via email, Facebook, Youtube, etc HOW we did it. The first thing I did was create a free fundraising website (I chose blogger) that we could use to help educate people about WHY our cause was so important. And on that site, our Team Esella site, I wrote a detailed post about how we fundraised, along with some great fundraising ideas that we didn't do, but may do in the future. You can read all about our fundraising here:
You can still make a donation in Esella's name by clicking on the Team Esella Logo to the right. Thank you for your support, and keep an eye out for Team Esella next year!
