First two landmarks reached for THE LONG PUSH!

And by landmarks I don't mean Blackpool Tower and Lytham Windmill! Although both of those I'll be passing of course on my journey. Oh no. What I mean is, while I was writing another blog post the other night I realised we were close to reaching two great achievements for the THE LONG PUSH so far. So, partly because of this and partly because my PC kept crashing (GRRRR!) I 'shelved' that post for another day, to wait until we reached these two points, and today we reached the second one.

DONATIONS

The 'Just Giving' page for THE LONG PUSH was set up on the 18th of January. Yesterday, Wednesday 25th January, we reched the first £100 in donations! AWESOME! Thank you so much to all who have donated so far. I'm thrilled skinny! Thank you for supporting the ride and for showing your belief in me. It's still very early days yet. There's a long way to go to achieve my goal of trying to reach the £5000 target and much to do to try and generate more donations and sponsorship.  Speaking of which...

THANK YOU! And don't forget, by ticking the 'Gift Aid' box you can generate even more towards the charity with every donation

SPONSORSHIP

Three companies have been the first to come forward to offer sponsorship to THE LONG PUSH 2012. This is more AWESOME news! I'm just waiting for all the 'I's to get dotted and all the 'T's to get crossed before I make any formal announcements. Suffice to say though that I am again, thrilled skinny about this and looking forward to being able to make those announcements.

Any downtime for getting out and training for the ride during February is going to be spent contacting more corporate sponsors to try and raise the profile of  THE LONG PUSH and generate some larger donations. I have lots of ideas of ways to generate donations, large and small. Every £1 counts. So with that in mind I'm thinking about getting some silicone wristbands made to support the ride. I've decided to adopt the colours black and yellow for this years ride. So I'm looking to get 500 of these made up. Probably 250 adult sized and 250 youth sized. The cost of getting these made is around about £230, but sold at £1 each they could end up making another £270 for the charity. I'm hoping I can find a corporate sponsor who will fund the cost of the wristbands OR someone who can supply them at a cheaper rate. Hopefully one of the corporate sponsors will help with this. 

My question to readers of this blog is, if I got these wristbands made up, would you buy one for £1? The number would be limited to 500 and I would look at posting them out to people for an added 50p in the UK. If anyone outside of the UK wanted one I'd work something out. To give me an idea if you think this is a viable option, please just say 'yes' in the comments box at the end of this blog post. Then I'll make a decision depending on the response. Thanks.

THE LONG PUSH on Facebook

100 up. Now to 150.

 The second 'landmark' was reached overnight last night, when Tara Holian Lewis became the 100th person to 'like' THE LONG  PUSH Facebook page! ( I can stop spamming other peoples walls now!) 

Again thanks to everyone who has clicked the 'like' icon so far. Please keep on sharing the link to the Facebook page and to this blog and we'll see just how many more people THE LONG PUSH can reach. I've started to expand it myself now by posting about it on music forums and motorcycle forums that I use. Please feel free to do the same and widen the scope of people the message reaches. Autism affects so many families, from all different backgrounds. The more people we reach the more families will benefit from the support able to be offered by FAMILIES CONNECTED.

Thanks once again for all the support shown so far. Onwards and upwards. Here's hoping for breaks in the rain to get wheels on concrete again. Watch this space for more blog posts soon.

Chris