This past weekend I was honored to attend the Pittsburgh 50 Finest Gala hosted by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Together, along with 49 other Pittsburgh young professionals, we raised a national record of $543,466 toward helping find a cure for Cystic Fibrosis. I would like to thank so many people for helping throughout this entire process and hopefully, through sharing my story, I can offer some insight and advice to anyone considering getting involved in charities like the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and Pittsburgh’s 50 Finest.
For me, this experience started in December 2018. I was helping my friend Josh Corcoran who was emceeing Pittsburgh’s Light Up Night. I got a call from my friend Katelyn Lesk inviting me to help record footage of the event for Josh’s YouTube channel – Spare Change. Spare Change combines music and charity by highlighting some of the top music events in Pittsburgh with raising money for numerous charities around the city (highly recommend clicking the link to check out their channel).
What I thought would just be a single night helping a great cause (The American Cancer Society) turned out to be a night that would completely change my year. As I recorded footage of happy families celebrating and ice skating around the Christmas Tree in One PPG Place, I remember seeing the smiles of children so excited calling us over so they could drop their coins and bills into the Spare Change bucket. Helping felt good.
After the event, my friend Chris Kail who was also helping with the charity invited me and my friends to a party overlooking Market Square. As we were having a few drinks, talking, and enjoying the view, he mentioned that he also helps raise money for Cystic Fibrosis and that I could consider joining him in 2019 to help raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
I remember thinking to myself that I had never really done any fundraising other than a 24-hour video game live stream which raised $1000 for Pittsburgh’s Children’s Hospital. I told Chris I was interested in helping and he said he’d get the ball rolling which started my journey with the Pittsburgh’s 50 Finest.
What is the Pittsburgh 50 Finest?
Pittsburgh’s 50 Finest is a program each year that honors 50 Pittsburgh young professionals who strive to improve our city and help fight the battle against Cystic Fibrosis. The individuals chosen as honorees each year are not only successful in their careers and accomplishments but more importantly, truly want to help build a better city and help the thousands of individuals and families who are struggling with Cystic Fibrosis.
What is Cystic Fibrosis?
After telling Chris that I would help with the charity, I came home and wanted to learn more so I searched hashtags related to Cystic Fibrosis on Instagram. I found the hashtag #CysticFibrosisFighter and was hit so hard by the very first story I found.
The profile is from a young girl who openly shared her entire story. My heart absolutely sank the moment I read it. I took finding this young girl’s story as a sign that this was what I was supposed to spend my year helping and supporting the fight against. She is the reason I became so committed to helping raise money to find a cure for Cystic Fibrosis.
**Warning: The following posts are very intense and upsetting. I include them because I feel they are most important to share because this is the reality of what we are fighting against. Cystic Fibrosis can be a real monster of a disease and we need to do everything we can to end it.
Here is a reply on the post she left to a commenter who said their daughter was also struggling with Cystic Fibrosis:
Cystic Fibrosis is a truly terrible disease. As you can tell from even just that short bit of personal experience and vulnerability she shows, cystic fibrosis is a fight no one should have to fight.
So how can someone like you or me help fight such a huge beast of a disease? Pittsburgh’s 50 Finest has decided to take on the challenge of spreading the word and raising awareness in every avenue that it can. Each person selected is given the freedom to plan their own events in the way they think will work best!
Pittsburgh 50 Finest Kick-off Party
The Pittsburgh 50 Finest program starts off with a kick-off event in March each year. To be honest, I really had no idea what to expect coming into the event since I had never attended a 50 Finest event and it’s definitely not easy to walk into a room of 100-150 strangers!
However, as I started talking with many of the people there, it became clear that the individuals chosen to be part of my 50 Finest class were very like-minded and motivated to meet new people and encourage each other to do our best. I remember talking to many people that first night who said things like, “Oh, if you ever need any help, just let me know! I’ve never done this either, but we can help each other out.”
I can tell you that I definitely took many people up on that offer! This being my first time raising money for charities, I had so many questions and ideas that I wanted to work on. For any future Pittsburgh 50 Finest, one of my biggest pieces of advice is to DEFINITELY take everyone up on their offers to help. Not only does it help to toss ideas around with others in the group, but I found that the more you help and attend other people’s events, the more rewarding the experience will be.
At this kick-off event, Angie Kinney spoke to us about her personal experiences with Cystic Fibrosis. She told us about her two daughters who both had Cystic Fibrosis and how much she appreciated everything we would be doing over the next 5 months. Hearing Angie open up and share her story and experiences with the disease was incredibly meaningful for me. Immediately after she spoke, I went up and told her how important that was to hear and how much it helped me feel connected with everything we would be doing.
Meeting My Cystic Fibrosis Family
Shortly after the kick-off event, we went to have dinner with a family who had a child with Cystic Fibrosis. This really helped me feel a connection with what we were working toward. So a week or two later, I went to visit Dale and Jen to meet their 18-month-old son, Clayton.
Along with 4 others, I arrived at their house and had a nice dinner. They introduced us to Clayton and showed us some of the struggles he deals with on a daily basis. They provided us with so much information that helped me understand what a child with Cystic Fibrosis deals with and the processes involved in making sure the symptoms are managed.
I felt very grateful that Dale and Jen welcomed us into their home and weren’t afraid to be open and real with us about how Cystic Fibrosis has affected their family.
Dale and Jen even held their own charity event to help raise funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. They hosted a Blind Pizza Tasting event in the South Hills where they got pizzas donated from pizza shops in the area and everyone voted on their favorite. Tickets were only $10 so I bought 10 and brought my entire family and it went incredibly well raising over $1000!
So….How Did I Raise Money??
I set my goal to raise $5,000 and let me tell you, I was quite nervous about how I was going to raise that and whether I’d even be able to. Luckily, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has Laura McCurdy, Justin Davis, and Kelly Spiers in charge who provided us with a ton of resources and personal help with everything we needed. Also, each Pittsburgh 50 Finest Honoree was paired with a mentor from a previous year to help give us guidance along the way.
Luckily for me, I knew a few participants from previous years so I had Chris Kail, Anthony Freeze (Host of the 24 Hour Hustle Show, and Joe Leachko (Co-founder of Film Studio StudioMe) to help me out! I can’t thank these guys enough for the help they gave me. I’m not usually one who likes to ask for help, but when I was trying to come up with ideas on how to raise money, I was definitely feeling the pressure of how overwhelming things could get if I didn’t get ahead of it.
Anthony Freeze shared his experiences organizing and hosting a movie event which inspired me to look into holding one of my own (which unfortunately didn’t pan out) but it pushed me in the right direction.
Joe Leachko met with me for over two hours and shared a ton of excellent advice he learned from hosting a red carpet event of his own. These conversations with my mentors really helped me feel confident and excited about hosting an event similar to his own which inspired me to host a Cocktail Mixology class for over 50 people.
*Note: If you’re a new member of Pittsburgh 50 Finest and need help with anything, please feel free to reach out to me or your mentors. Trust me, it helps!
My First Event – Cocktail Mixology Class
I had so many ideas in my mind before finally settling on a Cocktail Mixology Class. One of my best friends (and the best bartender I know) is the founder of Liquid Flair Entertainment which provides excellent wedding, event, and corporate bartending services so I checked with him to see if he could help me host an event. At first, I think he thought I was going to do a small get together of 10 or so people which is what he is used to hosting Mixology classes for.
My office has a capacity of 50-60 people so I asked him how many he would be able to handle and he said, “You invite who you’d like and I’ll make it work!”. So I started with my close personal friends and family, then I invited the people I had met from the Pittsburgh 50 Finest group, and planned to then invite acquaintances to fill the capacity to raise as much as I could.
I quickly realized that after inviting my close personal friends and the 50 Finest, I was already approaching 50 people! So I actually had to worry about having too many people which is the total opposite problem I ever thought I’d have.
I was able to host the event in my workspace and everything went off without a hitch. My friend Jeff McGraw and his wife Sharon helped with food. My friend Marta Mazzoni also helped me plan for food and events in general so all guests had to do was show up, enjoy themselves, and learn how to make cocktails!
My friend Steve did a spectacular job of keeping the event very personable while he was teaching and made sure everyone was involved and having a great time. This event helped me raise over $2000 toward my campaign and really helped me feel confident that I would reach my personal goal of $5000.
*Note: If you’re planning an event, I found that writing personal invites for each specific person you want to attend works way better than creating a group invite or making general invites. I personally selected each person I wanted to attend my event to ensure that if they wanted to come, they could. I think this really improved my attendance. If you’re in a future Pittsburgh 50 Finest group, I recommend requesting to be friends with each person in your group on Facebook and write them a personal message introducing yourself and learning more about their events so you can attend and get to know them.
Don’t Underestimate People’s Willingness to Help
One of my concerns in the whole Pittsburgh’s 50 Finest and the Cystic Fibrosis charity process is that I generally consider myself terrible at asking people for money. This is one of the challenges I hoped to overcome during my time raising money for Cystic Fibrosis. And not only did it work for a few reasons, but it taught me not to underestimate people’s willingness to help.
I’ve always believed in the philosophy that if you try to help others and give without expectation that you will be rewarded in the future. This ended up being the case with the first donation I received.
I had been helping a guy with his website and I added a message to the bottom of the document I sent him saying, “Rather than worrying about payment at the moment, would you mind helping me raise money to support Cystic Fibrosis Charity? I’m trying to raise $5,000 for Cystic Fibrosis Research so I’d appreciate it if you donate what you think my time has been worth so far.”
I didn’t really have any expectations. He donated $1250 and I was absolutely shocked! I was incredibly grateful that he appreciated my help as much as he did and it helped me relax and feel like I would be able to reach my goal.
So that was the first time I really realized that I should not underestimate people’s willingness to help and that it’s okay to ask.
The 24-Hour Charity Challenge
The second time was during a 24-hour charity challenge. For 24 hours, whichever of the Pittsburgh 50 Finest that raised the most individual donations would receive a $1000 reward donation toward their campaign. I started the day just asking a few family members to donate a few dollars (which they did). Then I texted my personal friends and asked them, too. Again, they all did.
So I started writing friends on Facebook who I hadn’t spoken to in a little while and told them that I was hoping to get as many donations as possible and asked them if they could donate just a few dollars. What I did not expect was that people would donate WAY more money than I had asked for. In the 24-hour window, I received 86 individual donations totaling over $1600! Some friends donated $5, others donated $300 and I was surprised how many of the donations came from people I had only met in the past year through helping them with their websites and giving them advice on how to grow their businesses.
I was incredibly grateful for this challenge and I thought it was an ingenious way to help me feel comfortable asking people for money since the “ask” was for such a low number. My friends and family far exceeded my expectations and I learned a very important lesson that day which I will never forget.
Planning Group Events
My Total Amount Raised
Pittsburgh 50 Finest Gala 2019
As a group, our Pittsburgh 50 Finest Class of 2019 raised the most ever raised with the national record of $543,466! To celebrate, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation hosts a Gala every year to commend and honor everyone who helped raise money. The event was sold out with over 1,000 guests and speakers including Mayor Bill Peduto, Andrew Stockey, and Elena LaQuatra.
I was proud to have my accomplishments announced alongside my friend Rachel Mende who raised over $8,000 hosting a Kentucky Derby event, an absolutely hilarious comedy show, and with the support of her excellent group of friends.
The Gala was the perfect conclusion to the 5 months of hard work raising money to support finding a cure for Cystic Fibrosis! It was a real pleasure celebrating out accomplishments together as a group.
If you are considering being a part of the Pittsburgh 50 Finest, I highly recommend it. It is incredibly rewarding and so fulfilling to celebrate with your classmates after accomplishing so much. To every one of the 50 Finest, I truly appreciate meeting each and every one of you and I can’t wait to see what you all accomplish moving forward!
