Relentless Optimism Fundraising Blog: THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

If you have spent any time on our team fundraising blog over the last few months, then you know that we kicked off our fundraising for the Susan G. Komen 3 Day for the Cure by running a series of fundraising contests. All told, we ran seven contests starting with our test contest in November and concluding this past week with the March Madness and Fug Madness contests. The entry fee for each contest was a $10 donation made to our team and the winner of each contest won a cash prize equal to half the money collected for each contest. The rest of the money went to our fundraising goals for the Breast Cancer 3 Day.

I am now very happy to report that this series of contests netted Relentless Optimism $580 towards our fundraising goals for the 3 Day in Boston in July! We could not have raised this much money without each and every person that entered our contests, so thank you thank you THANK YOU!!

Obviously, this has been a big undertaking and we have a lot of people to recognize for their contributions! First and foremost, I wanted to specifically recognize the winners of each of our contests:

The Baby Q Prediction Contest was won by Relentless Optimism team member Jen Rabbitt.
The Golden Globes Contest was won by Rex Sager.
The Super Bowl Contest was won by Cliff Michaels.
The Fantasy Winter Olympics League was won by Dennis Roesch.
The Oscars Contest was won by Paul Jarnagin.
The March Madness Pool was won by Catherine Prince.
The Fug Madness Pool was also won by Catherine Prince.

All told, we had 56 different people that entered at least one contest, with many of you entering more than one contest. I wanted to take this opportunity to recognize all of you one more time and to again extend our immense gratitude to all of you! So thank you again to the following people:

Aleece Hoeslcher
Amanda Rabesa
Andy Rabbitt
Barb Ries
Bill Rabbitt
Catherine Prince*
Cliff Michaels*
Colin Fink
David Moreland*
Dawn Mazzanti
Dennis Roesch*
Diana Moreland*
Donald Collier
Dustin Davis
Elaine Pranski
Emily Ryan
Hally Trementozzi*
Heidi Foster
JT Shoemaker*

James Lee

Janet and Tim Shoemaker*

Jeanine Collier

Jeff Proulx

Jen Rabbit*

Jon Trementozzi*

Karen Sager**

Kathy Cincotta

Kelly Langford*
Kristen Cincotta**
Kristin Moreland*
Laurie Yaw*
Leah Roesch
Linda Velott
Lindsay Collins
Mara Heppen
Meag and Any Jenkins*
Melissa Campos*
Melissa Querry

Miguel Campos

Mike and Caroline White*

Mike Cincotta*

Nicholas Hatch

Patty Hicke

Paul Jarnagin

Rebecca Rofman

Rex Sager*

Robyn Torkewitz*

Roger Sager*

Ron Barrows

Sara Dodson

Sarah Barrows

Suzanne Tydlacka*

Tamara Campbell

Tammy Dowdle

Tommy Schenck*

Troy Humphrey

Please note that those designated with stars entered more than one contest and those with two stars entered all seven contests. It is worth noting that the additional entries from those of you who entered more than one contest accounted for more than half of the money that we collected during the course of these contests, so we are especially thankful to all of you!!

Throughout these contests, we have had a lot of help from a number of people. I want to first thank my friend JT Shoemaker for helping me keep everything organized for each contest, teaching me how to make tables in HTML, setting up and maintaining the Fantasy Winter Olympics page and for helping to spread the word on Facebook and beyond. You're seriously awesome and I can't thank you enough. I also wanted to thank my cousin Robyn Torkewitz for coming up with the idea for the Fug Madness contest and for single handedly bringing in half the entries for that contest. I also need to thank everyone that helped to spread the word about our contests. It is on the strength of word of mouth that these contests live and die and we appreciate all the help you guys provided with accomplishing this. I especially want to recognize Kristin Moreland, Linda Velott and Mara Heppen for all the ReTweets, Facebook posts, emails and more! I know you guys weren't the only ones, but you guys really went above and beyond. Finally, I of course need to thank the members of Relentless Optimism for helping to get the word out about each contest - you're the best!

These contests were designed to be a fun way to increase awareness of our fundraising efforts for the 3 Day and to get the ball rolling on our fundraising. With something like this, it can be easy to forget about what the real purpose is - to raise money for breast cancer research. I was reminded today that one person in the United States dies from cancer every 68 seconds. One life, every 68 seconds. And as I have been reminded so many times, the current treatments for cancer are intense, rigorous and often cause as much pain as the cancer itself. Sometimes, it's the treatments themselves that actually take that life. The need for more research and better treatments is huge. So seriously - THANK YOU for taking the time to enter our contests and helping us with this important goal!

As always, if you would like to make an additional donation to Relentless Optimism, you can find the links to each of our individual pages in the right-hand side bar. You can also find our team page on the 3 Day website by clicking here. We have a long ways to go before we reach our team goal - please help us get to Boston by making an additional donation today!