Sadly, it's been awhile since we've been able to host an event at the Big Gay Frat House. Lots of reasons, many of which can be tied to the economy. But in the meantime, we still want to help out the agencies that support our community.
So many people we know are riding their bikes from San Francisco to Los Angeles from May 31 through June 6th as part of the AIDS/LifeCycle Ride to End AIDS. Riders will bike 545 miles to help raise awareness that AIDS remains a serious problem, and also raise money for the programs of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the LA Gay & Lesbian Center.
But it's a huge commitment. Not only are the riders taking a week off work to trek over 500 miles (not to mention spending months training and conditioning to prepare for the ride), but they also have to commit to raising a minimum of $3,000 each. That's a lot of dough. Most riders start by asking their friends and family, but that's often not enough (especially since so many of us have many friends who are participating). Many riders have resorted to doing some really creative mini-fundraisers to help them reach their goal.
And we can help.
Are you doing something really creative to help you reach your goal? Lots of bars have hosted special events for riders in the past. And many have been able to raise a lot of money through raffles, selling Jell-O shots, and similar ways.
Here are a few of the clever things we've heard about...
- A few years ago, a pair of friends did a BikeR Fundraiser event at the Powerhouse that included the typical raffles and such. But in addition, they got on stage and each agreed to remove an article of clothing for every $20 thrown into a bucket. This allowed people to contribute whatever they could (some threw in a few bucks, some threw in several $20s). And yeah, one got totally naked.
- Two riders are hosting an upcoming event at Truck. They've gotten 14 of their friends to be put up for a Bachelor Date Auction (complete with dinner).
- One person we heard of, years ago, did his fundraising entirely online on his blog. He posted pictures of himself that were increasingly more and more revealing the more he raised.
There are so many creative ideas. Drag shows and other performances. Auctions for bachelor dates or other services (yard work, housecleaning, professional photography services, and the like). Raffles. If you don't have donated items to raffle off, consider the strip-for-donations idea above. Or something like the Manwash raffles at the Powerhouse in June and July 2006, where a lucky raffle winner got to get a porn star dirty with body paint and then another lucky winner got to clean them up. (Nothing needed to be donated except for the porn star's time.) Or the Looking Good, Feeling Fab fundraisers that Sister Roma has done (including this one in September 2005 and this one in September 2006) where cute guys literally sold all the clothes they were wearing for charity (presumably they brought extra clothing and didn't walk home naked).
So if you have a creative idea to help raise money for the AIDS/LifeCycle ride, we wanna help. It can either be a physical event at a bar or other venue, or even something done online. But it's got to be creative, something more than "I'm riding, please give me money." Which of course is fine, but we want to promote ones that are a little bit more participatory.
If you have an idea, email us a pitch about what you're planning. We in turn can help publicize it in several ways:
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We will blog about it on the BGFH Blog
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We will create a page on the BGFH site for all of the different ones we're promoting
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We will collect all of the ones we're promoting and send an email to our email list (which currently has 1,118 people on it)
So ... send us a pitch and we'll see if we can help.
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