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“Your passion is why I love my job. I have not come across a donor who would literally go the extra mile like you have”
-Bridgett Ford, Senior Development Associate, Kent State University Foundation
In early 2007, I created the Tour de France Challenge, a fundraising event for the Delta Upsilon Dylan Fiztgerald Carlton Endowed Scholarship Fund at Kent State University in Ohio.
While a student at KSU I had a great boss and student adviser named Donna Carlton. Donna understood what a lot of the other faculty didn’t: that we were a bunch of barely-adults who, for the most part, didn’t know what the hell we were doing but were still trying our best. She gave us a lot of freedom and support that went far past her job. If that freedom let us screw something up, she’d help us clean up the mess. She understood that we were all away from home and on many occasions opened her home to students that needed it.
In the summer of 2002, Donna lost her son Dylan to complications from a congenital heart defect. Dylan was 15.
Many who knew Donna often spoke of finding a way to memorialize Dylan on campus. In fall of 2006 Delta Upsilon, the campus fraternity she has advised for many years, worked with Donna to establish the Delta Upsilon Dylan Fitzgerald Carlton Endowed Scholarship Fund.
Before the scholarship could be realized it needed to reach a critical mass of $25,000 that would make it self-sustaining. To get things rolling, I donated $10,000 that fall.
It wasn’t enough to get the scholarship to its viability goal, though, which bothered me.
So I created the Tour de France Challenge as a means of encouraging others to donate to the scholarship fund with me.
The fundraiser centered around one simple thing: I would ride Stage 14 of the 2007 Tour de France in an effort to raise funds for the scholarship.
Stage 14 was chosen because it was one of the most difficult stages of the 2007 TDF: a mountainous 122 mile stage with more than 12,000 ft of climbing. If I was going to ask for help, I figured I should earn it.
I sweetened the pot for both the donors and the scholarship by offering ‘performance contracts’. A performance contract let the donor set a particular goal for me (finish the stage, lose a certain amount of weight in training, do something particularly embarrassing on the TDF podium, etc). So, a donor could guarantee a $100 donation, but also add a performance contract that said they would add another $100 if I met their challenge.
To make sure the scholarship got that $200 no matter what happened I added a twist: if I failed to meet the goal of a performance contract, I had to donate the additional funds.I trained for five months in the mountains of southern California, riding for up to 7 hours a day and shedding nearly 30lbs in the process.
During those months I also coordinated publicity for the fundraiser, creating a TDF Challenge website, emailing weekly updates to potential donors, and getting press releases to various online cycling resources to widen the potential donor base.
I rode Stage 14 of the 2007 TDF on the same day as the pros, and when I started pedaling there was more than $3,000 in performance contract donations that would be my responsibility if I didn’t finish.
Nearly 8 hours after I started, battered and exhausted after two crushing mountain climbs and with the encouraging shouts of French cycling fans ringing out around me (“Allez! Allez!”), I crested the summit of the Plateau-de-Beille.
I had beaten the stage and raised more than $15,000 for the scholarship fund, taking it from an endowment to a fully realized scholarship.
The scholarship is awarded yearly to a Kent State University student who has demonstrated exemplary leadership and community service.