Support the Lombardi Party at its fifth annual comedy night fundraiser! Doors to the Giggles Comedy Club open on March 25 at 6:30 PM, with the show starting at 8 PM. A requested $25 donation gets you Boston's top comics, all-you-can-eat cheese pizza, a cash bar, and raffles! Proceeds benefit the MS Challenge Walk.

This is the events calendar, featuring official NMSS rallies and meetings as well as volunteer-sponsored fundraisers. Want to see your event listed here? Please submit the details, and we'll add it!

On Thursday, October 27th, Nick D'Alleva, Edible Arrangements store owner, stopped by to present the National MS Society Greater New England Chapter with a check for $5,240!

What a delicious sum!

Nick brought the idea of the Orange Blossom donation program to Edible Arrangements, and he's proud that the success will lead to expanding it.

Thanks to your orders, Edible Arrangements and National MS Society staff are in discussions to have a nationwide MS Awareness month program in March, with donations going to the National MS Society. We appreciate everyone's support!

Danielle is a Development Coordinator for the Greater New England Chapter of the National MS Society. Prior to joining the staff at the National MS Society, she served as a crew team captain during the 2009 and 2010 MS Challenge Walks.

If you order merchandise between July 13 and 20, use coupon code CHALLENGE (case-sensitive!) during checkout to receive 15% off the orders. Spreadshirt will still donate 20% of the pre-discount price.

Looking good while raising funds has never been so easy!

Danielle is a Development Coordinator for the Greater New England Chapter of the National MS Society. Prior to joining the staff at the National MS Society, she served as a crew team captain during the 2009 and 2010 MS Challenge Walks.

Each walker is challenged to raise $1,500. Our goal is to support and encourage your fundraising efforts every step of the way! With that in mind, we are offering three special fundraising incentives for walkers and teams participating in the Challenge Walk.

We will be hosting an informational phone and online presentation for walkers to ask questions about fundraising and also to exchange unique ways to solicit donations! Visit the event's listing for details on how you can participate.

It�??s not too late to register your friends and family, fundraise and join the movement.

One of the keys to successful fundraising for the MS Challenge Walk is to ask absolutely everyone for support.  The more donors you solicit, the more donations you get!  The walker with the highest number of donors as of August 15th will �??feel the love�?� and receive special recognition along the walk route and lunch stop each day and during the evening programs.

Mini-Challenges This Week

Fundraise Online! Each person who raises at least $250 online this week will be entered to win a fabulous gift certificate for dinner at a local restaurant!*

Show Yourself Some Love! Did you know that walkers who make self-pledges and ask friends for donations typically raise up to six times more money than those who only do one or the other? Each person who makes a self-donation of $10 or more will be entered to win a gift card for Dunkin Donuts!

THE GRAND PRIZE: The person who turns in the most money this week will win an Amazon.com gift card!

Winners will be announced on the MS Challenge Walk Facebook page on Monday, July 18th.

*Participants must raise donations online to be eligible for prizes. Enter offline donations in your participant center before mailing the checks to our PO Box.

Danielle is a Development Coordinator for the Greater New England Chapter of the National MS Society. Prior to joining the staff at the National MS Society, she served as a crew team captain during the 2009 and 2010 MS Challenge Walks.

The two days of our fundraising yard sale are always interesting. Last year's was held in the rain; this year, we endured acaterpillar invasion. They were everywhere — and I do mean EVERYWHERE. I spent most of the day walking around the sale doing my part to save the trees by squishing the caterpillars. I must have stepped on five hyndred of them, with my sister laughing at me every time I squished another one.

To hold these yard sales, we have braved monsoons (or at least it felt like one), blazing hot temperatures, the aforementioned caterpillars, and lots and lots of crazy people. But we have also had some really great stuff come out of it as well. Years ago, three neighbors we had never met came over to help; now they help out each year. The bikers from the "social club" lend us tables and check in to see how things are going.

That's one full garage!

In the end, it was all worth it. We saw plenty of friendly faces, turned one person's trash into another person's treasure — and, best of all, we raised $1,100!

Interested in holding your own yard sale? Read this checklist for tips to get you started.

Jill lives in East Taunton with her husband and a very annoying cat. She was diagnosed with MS a little over 10 years ago when she was 24. She has been participating in the Challenge Walk since the beginning as a crew member and can also be found at many other fundraising events.

Our family's team fundraising campaign is kicked off each year with golf tournament, which raises a significant portion of the team's funds. We are fortunate for so many wonderful personal and corporate supporters.

Now that we have entered our fundraising season, I look forward to reaching out to friends, family and new co-workers (if done selectively) to ask them to support our family's team at the upcoming MS Challenge Walk. As I've been mentally (and manually) organizing my "ask", and starting to compile a list of people to solicit, I am eager to take advantage of the online tools in my Participant Center.

While its functionality (and ease) is great, I don't it to lull me into laziness in my solicitations. It would be easiest to import all the email addresses from my contact list into my Participant Center and shoot out a generic email to all, asking them for money. While there is a group of people to whom I will send such an email, I'll avoid this approach for just everyone. When you think about it, there are some people who should be sent an individualized email or letter. I mean, isn't the money they give valuable enough to take another moment to send them a special correspondence. I think it is.

The point is this: think about each person to whom you are soliciting. If someone falls into the category of receiving a more general email, that is fine. But if you come across someone who for whatever reason prompts your mind (or heart) to pause and suggest you send a personalized correspondence, follow your instincts and go that route. If you need help writing your letter, check out our advice and templates. The extra minute it will take to send them a personal solicitation may just turn out to be your biggest donor because of the attention and care you showed them. The money they give is worth your investment of time.

Todd is formerly the Director of Development for the Greater New England Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. In addition to reading his blog posts, you can also find Todd on Twitter.

While every work culture is different, I plan to selectively solicit new professional colleagues with whom I have already developed a bond. I'm not gearing up to email the entire department asking for money. They work in fundraising already, and at least half of the recipients wouldn't know me from a hole in the wall. But I'll create a list of 15–25 employees with whom I can correspond with confidence that they will donate. My stretch goal then will be to have others hear about what I'm doing at the MS Challenge Walk and want to donate because they have been touched in some way by MS.

As part of my research, I have uncovered several resources. I don't know if these are practical for me in the first year of my new work, but they are great ideas that I wish to share. There are some really cool workplace party ideas here that could easily be a fundraising. eHow provides some basic charity fundraising ideas for the workplace. There is good money to be made with ten fun and great fundraising ideas for your workplace. And if that's not enough, here are one hundred fundraising ideas at work.

Could you envision your workplace doing any of these? If so, start making them happen!

Todd is formerly the Director of Development for the Greater New England Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. In addition to reading his blog posts, you can also find Todd on Twitter.

Although this application no longer offers a thermometer on your profile like it used to, it will still share your fundraising progress with your friends, encouraging them to help you reach your goal. You'll need to issue these updates manually, not automatically like before. Full instructions are available online.

Fundraising on Facebook is just a click away.

Todd is formerly the Director of Development for the Greater New England Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. In addition to reading his blog posts, you can also find Todd on Twitter.

One of my fundraising goals this year is to solicit my new colleagues for financial support for the Challenge Walk. But I don't know quite how to do that yet. There are so many new (and unforeseen) turns in a new job, but also I know that there are a ton of generous and supportive people at Harvard. How/what/when/where can or can't I ask them to contribute?

As the year goes along, I hope to uncover many of these answers and will keep you posted. Maybe it will help as you fundraise "around the water cooler". In the meantime, if you have any ideas or suggestions, please don't hesitate to share.

Todd is formerly the Director of Development for the Greater New England Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. In addition to reading his blog posts, you can also find Todd on Twitter.

It's not that I thought it was impossible to raise $1,500 — I know people who've done this walk before, and overachievers like Ken set their goals thousands higher than that minimum. I just thought it was impossible for me. I have a small family, my friends are all starving graduate students, and "spare time" in which to do fundraising activities is about as foreign to me as sub-Saharan Africa. I depended almost exclusively on my solicitation letters — and yet, somehow, it all worked out. I reached my goal.

With that strange sense of calm, I can look back at what I did and see how it worked. I sent about thirty solicitation letters, and about twenty of those recipients donated. The few no-replies were mostly long shots — cousins with burgeoning broods of children whom I rarely see. For the most part, my family has been exceedingly generous about an event they are actually quite far removed from. (Is there a prize for having the most non-regional sponsors? Because the vast majority of my donations are from Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska!)

But I also wouldn't be even close to my goal if it hadn't been for the non-solicited donations from friends. In one day, a single, unexpected cash donation moved me from "I might get close…" to "I'll definitely reach my goal!". I also earned some bonus bucks through MS-related events that haven't tallied into my count yet. A friend of mine who thought I still had another hundred to go was pleasantly surprised to learn he had actually put me over the top!

Another factor I've started noticing is my Facebook counter has been getting me some last-minute donations. Apparently, people find a cause more irresistible if you actually look like you're going to succeed in meeting your goal. Because those bonus bucks are still out there, I've gotten a few donations even after reaching $1,500, which gave me a new goal: to actually raise the money I'd gotten in fundraising remission. It would be an amazing sense of accomplishment if I could actually "cancel out" the bonus bucks I thought I'd have to rely on!

I started this fundraising process thinking I'd be very lucky to make even half of the minimum, and I solicited without really expecting much response. But the one thing that has kept surprising me throughout this endeavor is the unexpected generosity people will show for a good cause. This Challenge Walk has given me a renewed hope — not just that people with MS can have better lives, but that we all can when we work together toward a worthy goal!

Kahmmie is a first-year walker and has just started to get involved with the MS community, with the inspiration of her significant other, Ken, this site's webmaster. She currently lives in the Boston area and attends graduate school full-time.