How to hit your fundraising minimum
The minimum looks scary the day you register and trivial the day you finish. The method: start immediately, ask personally, and let the training do the storytelling.
Every charity ride has a number — a fundraising minimum you commit to when you register. People fear it more than the miles. They shouldn't. Here's the entire method.
Start the day you register
The single biggest predictor of hitting your minimum is how early you start. Day one: set up your ride page, write three sentences about why, and send it to five people who love you. That first $100 changes your psychology for the whole campaign.
Ask personally, not broadly
A hundred people seeing a post does less than ten people getting a text with their name on it. The script is short: what you're doing, why it matters to you, the link, and a specific number. "Would you put in $25?" outperforms "anything helps" every time.
Let the training tell the story
Every long ride is content. Post the sunrise, the flat tire, the 40-mile day when you'd never ridden 30. People fund the effort they watch. By week eight your donors are invested in whether you make it.
The multipliers
Matching gifts: ask every donor to check if their employer matches — it's free doubling. Milestone asks: "I just rode 50 miles for the first time, help me match it with $50." And the re-ask: people who said "later" meant it; remind them in the final two weeks.
Nobody remembers the person who asked them twice. Everybody remembers the ride they helped fund.
If you'd rather build fundraising into the riding itself, that's the model this whole site runs on — pledge-per-mile fundraising, explained.
I do the miles. You decide who they’re for.
In 2027 I ride 10,000 miles, all on the bike, every one of them for queer communities. You pledge a few cents a mile and pick which org it goes to. It starts January 1.