FINAL FUNDRAISING EFFORT
$2,395

 

August 3, 2003
This weekend is final preparation time. I got some ass chapstick, or Chamois Butt'r. I got a drying rack for my Camelback bladder. Tuesday is the appt. for Mr. Bike to get a tune-up. I've turned in my medical wivers, insurance information and signed up for transportation (myself and the bike) to Pittsfield on Friday morning at 4:30am. What?

August 1, 2003
1 f*%#ing week...

 

 

July 14, 2003
In less than one month I will have completed that AIDS Action Ride, crossing Massachusetts in a 225 Tour du France or a leisurely bike ride through Mass (if you're me)... Excited and nervous.

July 13, 2003
My riding partner who screwed me, I mean who is doing other things this summer has come through with a nice donation. Thank you Elena (damn you) and Mike.

July 11, 2003
2 more checks have come pouring in. Thank you Florida and thank you crazy. $1,670.00

July 8, 2003
Here is the newest total... $1,570.00

ONE MONTH!

 

 

June 11, 2003
Here is the total so far... $1,395.00

June 4, 2003
Tonight was the Kick Off Party for the Ride. I found out tonight that because my trusty tentmate from last year and so called "friend" Elena is no longer doing the ride, I lose my $100 "Refer A Friend" bonus! Damn you Elena. This just means that you now have to give me at least $100 to make up for the loss. Hey, thats a plus!

June 1, 2003
I have now raised a staggering $1300 for this years ride. I again and again and again thank everyone for helping me fundraise this year! More More More, How do you like it? Um, I already said MORE!

The Kickoff Party for the ride is this Wednesday at Cambridge Brewery! Hopefully there will be a lot of people and lots of Free Stuff! I love me some freebies. Last year Jon and I scored a ton of those "running socks" that basically game me a nasty rash one the ride, but when we were getting them... WOHOOOOOOOOO!

 

 

May 21, 2003
I am in the midst of trying to get my work to do some creative fundraising. I am looking to get people to buy Casual Fridays for June and July! I think it will be a great way to raise money as well as morale at work. I will keep you posted.

May 9, 2003
It's officially cancelled. The Decordova Spin was supposed to be rescheduled, but instead has been scrapped.
MY BIKING PAL BRAD PITCHED IN SOME DOUGH!

May 3 , 2003
2 MORE DONATIONS! New total - $75.00

April 25, 2003
I GOT MY FIRST DONATION TONIGHT! Thank you Tom Neenan! $20 down, $2480 to go...

April 25, 2003
The The Decordova Spin is postponed due to inclimate weather this weekend. Gotta love New England.

April 20, 2003
This Saturday, the first official training ride will take place. Its called The Decordova Spin. For more information, please follow this link. If you are interested in riding, volunteering, or learning more about AIDS ACTION, this is the place to be. AIDS ACTION staff will be at The Decordova to give an introduction to the ride and a synopsis of the volunteering opportunities. Please come wish me luck as well.

Word on the street is that Elena, my riding partner in crime may not be able to do the ride this year. Armando is already out, Sam may be on the injured list... Looks like I am going this one alone. Apparently I am the only person interested in helping save lives.

April 19, 2003
If you are interested in hearing about what went wrong with the company that put on last years AIDS Ride that I did. Please read on. It's a nasty little story that may upset some readers, so please be warned. Readers Discretion is Advised. I also want to mention that the company that is putting on this years ride is also the benefactor. They are doing a grassroots ride with mostly volunteers, so they are being super conscientious about where the money is being spent and how the riders would like it to be applied to AIDS ACTION.

This article is from RIDE MAGAZINE

Impossible Scheme?

The AIDS Rides Massachusetts' Dan Pallotta Got Thousands Into Cycling, Got Rich, Got Sued, and Then... Got Lost

By FRANCINE LATIL

Just one year ago, things looked better than ever for Pallotta Teamworks. The for-profit charity events organizer had just relocated to a 47,000 square foot headquarters outside Los Angeles designed by an award-winning architect. As they settled into their new workstations, the 200-plus employees readied a record number of events. Sunlight streamed down from giant skylights into this stylish converted warehouse, split into tent-shaped working areas reminiscent of Pallotta Teamworks' greatest achievement - the traveling tent cities known as AIDS Rides.

AIDS Rides put more bicycles on the road between 1994 and 2001 than the rising price of gasoline or the success of Americans in the European peloton. A two-wheeled charitable celebration in an automobile-obsessed nation, AIDS Rides united lycra-clad cycling enthusiasts on high-end frames with new riders perched on rusty, decades-old bicycles. All pedaled for a single purpose - to benefit AIDS support organizations and research.

These multi-day, long distance events run by Pallotta Teamworks tallied 125,000-plus participants and cited donations to charity topping $95 million. Thousands credit AIDS Rides with a rediscovery of the joys of fitness and an introduction to a lifestyle sport, while teaching the value of a charitable conscience.

Just 10 months later, a lawsuit filed by a San Francisco AIDS activist was still pending when Pallotta Teamworks abruptly announced its closure in October. Employees arrived at work to find the doors of their new office chained shut. After years of criticism about fundraising tactics, the sun had finally set on Pallotta Teamworks.

What went wrong?

The tale of Pallotta Teamworks opens in the suburbs of Boston in the person of Dan Pallotta, the founder of the company bearing his name. Born to a working class family in Malden in 1961 in the early days of the Kennedy presidency (whose influ ence he often cites), Pallotta led student groups and played hockey in high school. He entered Harvard University in 1979 to major in developmental economics. Pallotta chaired the Harvard Hunger Action Committee, where his efforts to raise money to combat world hunger culminated in a plan for a long-distance cycling fundraiser. In 1983, Pallotta and 39 other students cycled from Seattle to the East Coast while raising $70,000 in an effort called the "Ride for Life."

Pallotta had considered a career in politics, and won a seat on the School Board of the City of Melrose while still in college. He agonized over one fact until then kept private he was gay. Fearing backlash even in liberal Massachusetts, Pallotta rejected his political aspirations and moved to Los Angeles to perform as a singer-songwriter. But Pallotta decided that being a musician wasn't his calling either. He started a small fundraising consulting practice in 1992.

In the devastation of the AIDS crisis, Pallotta's despair over the death of numerous friends in the early 1990s spurred him to a new kind of action. Following the "Ride for Life" blueprint, Pallotta organized the first AIDS Ride in California in 1994. The event boasted nearly 500 riders contributing around $1 million to charities, close to 70 percent of the total net revenue of the ride Pallotta's organizational group, later named Pallotta Teamworks, planned a second AIDS Ride from Boston to New York in 1995, while the California ride tripled in size.

Notably, many participants in Pallotta's rides were neither bicycle enthusiasts nor even occasional riders.

"Pallotta targeted the market that had never been on bikes," said Billy Starr, Founder and Executive Director of the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, a cycling event benefiting the Dana Farber Cancer Institute "They took part because they believed in the cause."

The rhetoric behind the AIDS Rides encouraged participants to feel that their daily exertions on the bike mirrored the suffering endured by people living with AIDS or other ailments. Motivational speeches encouraged riders to feel they were participating in something that could make a difference to end AIDS by supporting research groups and charity organizations improving the lives of people living with AIDS.

Participants returned from AIDS Rides insisting that the event had changed their lives. Those who could barely hold a straight line for their first bike ride filed into bike shops to prepare for their second AIDS ride. They upgraded equipment, piled on mileage, and many became die-hard cyclists. Cycling for many became as significant as AIDS.

But trouble appeared early.

Some riders noted that post-ride reports showed disappointingly small percentages of donations gathered from friends, relatives, and coworkers actually went to charity. They complained that Pallotta's presentations had a disturbing cult-like quality that echoed Pallotta's college-age training in Est and the Forum, two branches of a "human potential" group popular in the mid-70s Others disparaged the enthusiastic cross-marketing of PTW events and the sales of Pallotta's self-help book ("When Your Moment Comes A Guide To Fulfilling Your Dreams By A Man Who Has Led Thousands to Greatness") along the roadside.

Riders weren't the only ones left with a bad taste. Anthony Laskans of the Cycle Loft in Burlington, Mass, describes the experience when his shop wrenched for a New York-to-Boston ride "We put in herculean efforts but received no recognition, not even a thank-you note. As a business, we donated $20,000 worth of effort and support to another business, but they behaved like they were a non-profit and we were high-school volunteers The only recognition for advancing the cause went to Pallotta. We felt we had worked selflessly to make Pallotta richer."

Storm clouds gathered In 1996, the Philadelphia AIDS Ride caused a stir when proceeds for charity from the event tallied much smaller (about 20 percent of net) than expected. The State Attorney General's office filed a lawsuit against Pallotta's organization for having promised near 60 percent to charity. Pallotta himself paid civil charges (near $100,000) in restitution, though he never admitted any wrongdoing. The press around the lawsuit revealed that PTW's fee for organizing AIDS Rides started at $180,000 Pallotta refused to disclose actual salaries, noting that for-profit corporations aren't legally required to do so.

Pallotta justified his corporate approach by insisting that achieving good works should be rewarded with competitive paychecks, and charity organizations should be run with the same advertising sense as a large corporation. At the same time, Pallotta moved into a new home valued at several million dollars in the star-studded Laurel Canyon area of L.A. He was spotted driving a Lexus SUV and a 3-wheeled electric car, and visited event campsites on a bright red motorcycle. Such signs of success - or excess - suggested that Pallotta enjoyed substantial personal profits from the organization of which he was sole executive officer.

Every year, PTW passed more money to charities, but each year the net sum for charity added up to a smaller percentage of the billowing costs of production.

The Better Business Bureau recommends that the cost of running charitable events should absorb no more than 35 percent of the net profit, but PTW rarely matched those numbers after the first years.

Pallotta claimed that producing such events necessitated high overhead costs. A PTW event netting $10 million could hand $4 million to charity - wasn't that better than a non-profit event that netted $100,000, giving $60,000 to charity?

PTW organized more elaborate and remote rides, and began planning walks for breast cancer charities. As public grumbling grew, so did the number of events - while contributions to charities dropped. Dismayed with PTW's reputation, two California charities (San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center) severed ties with the organization in 2001 and staged their own charity ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles (AIDS/LifeCycle). PTW made a major public relations gaffe when it filed suit to stop the promotion of a second California AIDS ride. Loyal AIDS Ride participants were aghast to see such a dispute between these two charity groups and their former benefactor. When Pallotta lost, the competing rides took place within two weeks of each other. [Ties were indeed severed in 2001, but the first LifeCycle ride was in 2002 - Ron]

In 2002, PTW prepared to expand to 24 events, including a European ride, but new lawsuits arose against Pallotta.

A class action suit filed on behalf of riders in the 2001 Canada-US ride charged that Pallotta had misrepresented the percentage of profits that would be donated to charity (he promised 60 percent, final numbers approached 16 percent). In response, Pallotta explained that fewer participants, a weakened economy, and a falloff in donations caused diminishing percentages for charity, since AIDS Rides cost the same amount to run even with fewer riders.

In April 2002, Mark Cloutier, a San Francisco AIDS activist, filed suit against PTW for violating California's Charitable Purposes Act and Business and Professions Code. The lawsuit, perhaps the last straw, remained unresolved when PTW closed its doors. Officially, Pallotta told the Associated Press his action was "intended to save money and ensure the events it both creates and produces could go on as planned." Employees were told they might be re-hired, and some returned temporarily to run a few fall events. But since then, PTW has begun liquidating its vast collections of event gear.

In the age of Enron, Pallotta's vision of a profitable charitable organization apparently failed to hold water, and the appearance of profiteering sank the ship. "The big loser is the AIDS vaccine effort," says Dr. Rafi Ahmed, director of Emory Vaccine Center in Atlanta, noting that AIDS Rides brought in about $1 million a year that they would not have received otherwise." (Nancy Harbert, "Riding Your Heart Out, Then Feeling Betrayed", The New York Times, Nov. 18, 2002.)

The effect of this public collapse may ripple through the industry. Shadows of doubt now fall on other charity cycling events; yet non-profit organizations that ran smaller-scale fund-raising events during the AIDS Rides years continue to grow, and new organizations have stepped up to plan future regional rides.

Tri State Trek, a fund-raiser to fight ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), is one. "PTW did fantastic things for cycling and for fundraising," says Mat Mendel, organizer of this Boston-to-New York ride modeled on the AIDS Ride. Mendel worked for Pallotta Team Works and saw the good and the bad of the experience. "But people were tired of the low percentages. I won't give back less than 72 percent to my beneficiaries. I'd like it to be closer to 100 percent."

Bicycle sales too could be left in the dust. AIDS rides got thousands of non-cyclists onto bikes and into bike shops, training for weeks and months prior to events. "People signed up to ride an event because they were interested in the cause, then they discovered that they loved cycling," notes Lori Hoefer, Serotta Bicycles' Director of Customer Relations. Some former participants kept training and riding, abandoning their SUVs to the garage instead of their bikes. "Pallotta's events brought the sport to people who weren't regular riders," Hoefer adds, "and sometimes they were bitten by the bug and became high end buyers."

"AIDS Rides were extremely good for the bike business," concludes Charles McCorkell, owner of Bicycle Habitat, a shop in New York City.

"If all the benefit rides were to cease, we would be impacted to the tune of 20 percent of our sales," adds Laskaris.

AIDS Rides have been a rude awakening from naivetè for many. The bike industry is hopeful participants disappointed with the downfall of PTW will find other fundraising opportunities, and will stay on their bikes for their own reasons. But it's unlikely that any future charity endurance events will be as large and as nationally well known as the AIDS Rides ... at least until the bitter taste of PTW's heavy-handed corporate approach fades.

***Apparently Pallotta gave back about 44% to the benefactors in 2001. No official numbers were ever released for the ride I did in 2002. Bastards.

April 6, 2003
The big news of the day is that I bought a brand new bike today from Community Bicycle in the South End. It's nothing too high tech or fancy schmancy. Just something to force me to train this year. As you may know, when I get a new toy I am all over it. So, the bike was incentive, a push in the fitness realm. I got a great deal and could not boast more about the folks at Community Bicycle.

Click HERE to see the new 2 wheeled wonder!