Break/Kick/Pushup-a-thon?

[tommarker]

Does anyone here have any experience in running this kind of event?

 

I'm looking at trying to put one on this summer to benefit a local charity (and draw a little attention to my school, yes) and am wondering how successful these tend to be?

 

I'm thinking of offering all three because some people just hate to break, and I don't want to exclude them.

 

How much wood? Is it unrealistic to get a shop to donate? Do I need waivers? Is this kind of thing even interesting?

[ShotokanKid]

What are these? Never heard of them

[Shorinryu Sensei]

I've never heard of this sort of specific event tommarker, but about 15 years ago we had a 24 hour Karate-a-Thon to raise money to help out a 16 year old TKD BB with leukemia. I honestly don't remember how much we raised, but it wasn't a massive amount...maybe a couple of thousand bucks...but it was a heck of a lot of fun for the people that attended the event.

 

Basically what we did was invited every martial arts instructor within travelling distance of the event to attend and bring as many students as they could. There was a small entrance fee...maybe $10/person, and every instructor put on a 1 hour class...some more than one, of some sort. Breaking, sparring, self-defense, grappling, weapons, etc and those were all free to any of the participants. Pressure was put on everybody to NOT sleep during the entire event, and I think only a very few did. Spectators were charged $5 and had their hands stamped and could come and go as they pleased. We held it at a school gym.

 

We had food donated by grociers and restaurants, TV stations came down and reported for free...radio stations too I think, and of course the local paper ran a lot of stuff for free. All proceeds from the sale of everything went directly to the parents of the kid for travel, medical expenses, etc.

[tommarker]

Break-a-thon: sponsors agree to pay per board broken. participants try to break as many boards as possible in a given time.

 

Kick a thon: usually number of consecutive kicks you can rattle off on a target in 1 minute.

 

Pushups... you get the idea.

 

My idea was that some people just HATE breaking, and would therefore not want to do it. But instead of not havig eager volunteers, let them help out with an alternate activity.

[TangSooGuy]

I organized a Kick-a Thon about two years ago to help fund the building of a new YMCA where I will be teaching.

 

I had a little under 20 participants, we spent 45 minutes actually doing the various kicks, and raised approximately $1500 dollars. Obviously given more time, and more participants, more money can be raised.

 

Basically the gist was this:

 

I gave each student a sponsor pledge form, where they get sponsors to donate either a flat amount, or a certain amount per kick, up to a cap point, setting the goal of the students to reach that cap point.

 

I also offered incentives for the person who did the most kicks and the person who raised the most money, in the form of gift certificates redeembale for merchandise atretail price (you save a lot this way when you pay wholesale price, but these two students are still essentially getting something free)

 

I set a deadline for the pledge form to be returned, and set up a spreadsheet with each students name down the side and kick challenges going across the top.

 

Kick challenges included:

 

Several different types of kicks, a balance challenge where it was as many kicks as they could do without putting their foot down, a speed challenge where the time was shortened to 30 seconds instead of a minute, etc...you can make up pretty much anything.

 

Each student was partnered up with someone tocounttheir kicks and hold targets, and we alternated minute by minute, with only half kicking at a time, and half getting a minute rest by counting between each challenge.

 

After each set of kicks was completed, I recorded the number in the spreadsheet.

 

Our highest kick count came close to 1,000 kicks over the course of the event.

 

Their final kick counts were given to them, and they were sent to collect their pledges, and have them returned to me by a specific date. Unless they talked with me over extenuating circumstances, they were responsible for collecting and returning all the money that was pledged.

 

I may do this again, as I now may have bigger numbers participating, and it was a quick way with minimal effort to raise some money, and the YMCA was overjoyed.

 

If you go the extra mile, you can get some good publicity as well.

[tommarker]

Thank you, Sir!

[ShotokanKid]

sounds like something that will get a person pretty tired