Fundraising x Running

Disclaimer: People who brag about how much they run or what they’ve done for charity are categorically obnoxious. In this context however, you’re (probably) here to gauge interest in me as a designer and person. The personal projects on this page are not explicitly design-related, but they showcase long-range planning, setting goals, a willingness to engage in something challenging and learn new skills, a desire to be helpful to people, coordinating people and managing stakeholders, creativity, tenacity, and passion. Plus they’re funny – I mean look at that grape costume.

Background

I ran my first half-marathon in grad school, and my first marathon during my first year at Blackbaud (April 2017). When COVID reared its head in 2020, running became my COVID hobby. Eventually I realized I could combine my love of running and planning stupid challenges for myself with a desire to help my community. Below I’ll quickly describe three running fundraisers I planned and executed for the benefit of Lowcountry Food Bank, which have totaled a over $16,400.

I’ve led the walk at Lowcountry Food Bank’s annual *Walk to Fight Hunger* for the last four years in a row.

BANANAMAN 50-miler: 50 one-mile loops

In 2020, during the early part of COVID and the associated lockdowns, I was doing almost all of my running on a one-mile loop around a park near downtown Charleston. People were stressed out, and I got the idea that it would be funny to run there in a banana costume to try to lighten the mood, and to use that attention to raise money for our food bank. The farthest I’d run in one go up to that point was about 28 miles, and to give the fundraiser a little bit of a spectacle I decided to attempt 50 one-mile loops. I set a fundraising page up online, got the word out, and in early September completed all 50 laps, raising a little over $3,000.

I knew it would be brutal to run for that long alone so I coordinated with a bunch of friends who came out and (from six feet away) ran with me and helped pass the time.

The Yeti 100-miler and Running Mind

Being able to finish a 50-mile run eventually resulted in the deranged urge to see if I could finish a 100-mile run. That race was called the Yeti 100, and it occurred on September 30 and October 1, 2022. It took me a little under 28 hours, running up and down a mountain in Virginia, during tropical storm Ian.

The training plan for that race was five-months long, and I figured with a runway that long and the knowledge I’d gained from the BANANAMAN fundraiser, I could do more for the food bank. I got interviewed by the local news, and I was in our local arts & culture paper. We set and met a goal of $10,000 from 117 unique donors, and the Yeti fundraiser was Lowcountry Food Bank’s largest individual online fundraiser for 2022. This led to the invite to lead their Walk to Fight Hunger, which is where the grape picture at the top came from, which I went on to lead in ‘23, ‘24, and ‘25.

As another way to promote the fundraiser and as a passion project, I kept a training journal over those five months, in the form of a graphic novel memoir. Each week, I would write and illustrate one spread, resulting in a 152-page graphic novel about running and a whole bunch of other stuff. I sold around 200 physical copies that I self-published, and distributed a whole ton more for free via a PDF.

The first printing, which sold out. I sold some of these at run club and packed and shipped the rest myself.

Me and my crew around mile 90 at Yeti, after the sun had come back up and the storm had cleared out.

Orbtober

This past October I put together one more running fundraiser, dubbed Orbtober. Park Circle, the neighborhood I live in in North Charleston, has a massive traffic circle that is about .5 miles in circumference, with a sidewalk that wraps around the outer edge. I designed, led, and kept track of a month-long set of challenges that local runners or walkers could register for and engage with. The challenges were: Fastest single lap (men’s and women’s), slowest single lap, most laps in one day, most laps over the entire month, and most funds raised. I designed t-shirts, created a website with full rules and registration, and solicited sponsorship in the form of prizes from six local businesses. One weekend in the middle of the month we hosted a food drive inside the circle and collected over 600 pounds of food and other donated goods.

At the end of Orbtober, we had raised over $3,400 for the food bank, and all entrants collectively ran over 1,648 laps (or Orbs) around the circle. There’s a good chance it’ll be coming back in October 2026.