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How I did it: Five Ohio State staffers tell their Pelotonia fundraising stories to help inspire others to join the cause

Posted on | July 15, 2009 | 2,865 views |

By Jeff McCallister

Rich Blagg was one of the first riders to sign up for Pelotonia back in November when the event first was announced.

“As soon as I heard about it, I knew I had to do it,” said Blagg, an imaging technician in the Medical Center’s Nuclear Imaging Lab.

Blagg used to be a serious rider, one who took part in the annual 210-mile Tour of the Scioto River Valley with several of his colleagues from the radiology and cardiology staff.

But that had been a long time ago — a lifetime, in fact. He fought a successful battle with a rare form of cancer in the years since and had been in remission for exactly five years when news about the grass-roots cancer-fighting bike tour broke.

“I didn’t give the minimum donation any thought,” Blagg said. “I know a lot of people who I knew I could count on to sponsor me.”

Blagg’s fundraising efforts have been fairly simple, yet extremely effective. First, he and his wife, Bobbie Termeer, wrote to all of their contacts. The letter gave a brief account of his fight and included a picture of himself that he Photoshopped next to Lance Armstrong.

“I said, ‘What three things do these two guys have in common? We’re both cancer survivors, we’re both exceedingly good-looking and we’re both riding in Pelotonia. I had almost a quarter of my fundraising commitment in the first week, and within a month I had surpassed it.”

He didn’t stop there. He’s recruited other people from his office to ride as well. A group of five of his coworkers solicited baked goods and held a bake sale in the lobby of the heart hospital that raised $750 in three hours, and his total of $3,210 raised has come with only two donations larger than $100.

His peloton now is seeking used books for a book sale they’re planning in August, and Blagg said they’ll go on raising as much as they can right up until the final accounting is due in October.

“We’ll meet our goals no problem,” he said. “But people should know it’s not too late to sign up, it’s not too late to raise that money. You’ll find lots of people want to help you out.”

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As coordinator of alumni relations and fundraising for the College of Public Health, Lexie Noice is accustomed to asking people for money, but the thought of asking people to sponsor her for her ride in Pelotonia still seemed difficult.

But she’s found a simple philosophy that made it easier.

“My main advice is just to ask,” said Noice, who had raised $845 of her $1,000 goal as of July 11. “It seems simple, but people don’t realize that if you ask, people will donate. They want to support this cause because it’s important, and this particular event is so efficient in getting every penny to the fight against cancer. But you can’t raise money if you don’t ask.”

Noice said she’s sent out about 40 e-mails to friends and family, and still has another dozen or so to send. She said she tries to personalize each request rather than simply send out one blanket e-mail to all the contacts.

“I’ve been really pleasantly surprised at how everyone has reacted,” she said. “There have been a couple of times that I was a little hesitant to send my e-mail to someone and then within like five minutes they’ve sent me a hundred bucks. I’ve really been touched at the response.

“I had an aunt who died of breast cancer and I have an uncle who’s a cancer survivor,” Noice said. “The disease touches so many people in so many ways that it seems silly not to do everything we can to fight it. Riding in Pelotonia is a way for me to show that I believe in what Ohio State is doing and that I believe in the power of people coming together in support of a great cause.

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Brendan Flaherty has had a bit of unwitting help from the Village of New Albany in his efforts to raise the $2,000 for his Pelotonia ride.
The village enforces a code that requires residents’ mailboxes to be a uniform green color and have no rust.

One day as Flaherty, a construction manager for Facilities Operations and Development, was painting his mailbox to conform to the code, he realized he might be sitting on a gold mine.

“I drove around the neighborhood where I live and noticed a lot of the mailboxes were the wrong color or they were pretty rusty,” he said. “So I decided I’d offer to paint people’s mailboxes for a $50 donation to Pelotonia.

“I made myself up a flyer about what I was raising money for, then went around knocking on doors,” he said. “I got all kinds of reactions, but almost everyone has been extremely positive.”

Flaherty has painted more than a dozen mailboxes around New Albany and expects to do several more. Along with a nice donation from a Little League coaching colleague whose family has a cancer foundation, he had raised $1,630 by the beginning of July.

“I’m finding that it’s been pretty fun to go out there and raise the money,” he said. “Every time someone else wants to help donate to the cause it gives me an extra boost. It’s a good feeling.”

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As a patient representative at The James Cancer Hospital, Krista Maxey has daily — hourly, even — reminders of what the disease can do to individuals, families and entire communities.

So when she heard a speech by Cancer Center Director and James CEO Michael Caligiuri recruiting riders for Pelotonia, she didn’t need much convincing. In fact, she signed up for the 180-mile tour even though she had never before ridden more than a couple of miles at a time.

She has since decided on a shorter route, but she’s already raised more than enough money ($2,805) to have gone the distance, and she’s been imaginative and diligent in doing it.

She held a fundraiser at Harrison’s on Third, where the establishment enticed folks in with all-night happy-hour prices and allowed Maxey to keep the $5 cover charge. After soliciting donations of items ranging from golf-course passes to Cleveland Indians’ autographed baseballs to gift baskets of all sorts, she had the entire $2,000 by the end of that event.

“I spent a couple of months before the fundraiser going around and asking for people and businesses to donate items for the silent auction, and we got $1,000 from the auction alone,” Maxey said. “The cover donation and raffle made another thousand.”

She has since piggybacked on a friend’s golf outing by asking the friend to charge an extra $3 from each entrant for a Pelotonia donation, and made another $250.

“One thing about me: I’m not afraid of rejection,” Maxey said. “Not that there was too much. But a lot of the larger corporate businesses have a lot of hoops they make you jump through to get a donation, so mostly I’ve stuck to smaller, local businesses. Shadowbox Cabaret has all kinds of fundraising opportunities; Funny Bone too.”

Maxey said she raised all her money this year without hitting up any family or friends for cash donations. “I want to do this every year, so I wanted to be able to hold all that in reserve,” she said.

And now she’s focused on helping the other members of her peloton come up with their minimums. She plans another event at Harrison’s and a similar one at Texas Roadhouse, which will donate a percentage of sales on a given night to a cause in exchange for drumming up a little extra business.

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Kris Myers enjoys a good party, so since her birthday’s at the end of July, she decided to throw herself a bash. Instead of gifts, she’ll ask her friends and family in attendance to sponsor her Pelotonia ride.

“I’m going to have it at a restaurant and fund all the food and drinks myself and try to pull together some raffle stuff,” said Myers, director of membership sales and service with Ohio State’s Department of Recreational Sports.

Myers had raised nearly $500 before any fundraising event just by putting out a quick call to her friends and family.

“I sent an e-mail around where I mention that I’m going to be riding in Pelotonia,” she said. “Then I said, ‘Now stop laughing long enough to read the rest of the e-mail,’ and went on explain what it is, why I’m doing it and how to donate.

“I know I can raise the minimum; I’d like to get more than enough,” she said. “To be honest, the hills between here and Athens scare me a lot more than the fundraising does.”

Myers said she used to be an avid rider, but “two kids and life” happened, and now she’s using Pelotonia as motivation to get back into riding shape. She even bought a new bike and has been attending Pelotonia shape-up sessions at RPAC where she works.

“Right now my legs are all, ‘aarrggh,’” she said. “But I can see the difference the training has made already. I feel better, and if nothing else comes of this, that’s a pretty good result.

“But that’s just it: That won’t be all that comes from it because I know every penny I raise will go to fight cancer.”

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