Now that the 2001 season has drawn to a close, it is with great pleasure to reveal the fruits of the TSR Injury Fund's labor.
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DONATION STATISTICS
In 1999, we had 49 donors for a total of $3,300...
In 2000, 91 for $8,300...
In 2001, 110 for $5100.
Overall, 215 individuals have donated to the Injury Fund since it's inception. Next season we're going to emphasize getting a greater number of people involved. The comment we received the most is that $25($50 in '00) was just too much for a raffle ticket. So, we're going to take this suggestion, and heed your call. We have not settled on a final plan for the 2002 season, but if we do continue with a raffle theme, it will be limited to $5-$10 per ticket.(You can still buy multiple tickets, too.) We've listened to you, so please show us that we're making the right call. Using your feedback, our hope is to at least double the number of participants from 2001, so please don't miss the opportunity.
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2001 DISBURSEMENT
With the $5000 that we have received this year, we had previously announced that we would donate it all to one of the New York City relief funds. To our surprise, we received a significant amount of negative reactions and feedback, so we felt that we must recant that decision. We still feel that there is a great need for the many people hurt by the September 11th tradegies, so we are going to still donate $1000 to them.
Originally, we had planned to pull a $5000 cash prize winner, but that would have to be from all 500 tickets, sold or not. Considering that we only sold 205 of them, we felt that the odds of giving it away were too low, or that if someone did if fact win it, then we would be left with nothing for the cause. We brainstormed for a happy medium, and decided to pull one ticket, and reward that lucky ticket holder with $1000. Next season, if we collect $10,000 as budgeted, we will be happy to give away more, but this season just was not meant to be.
So, at the GNF, we had Chuck the WERA starter randomly select that ticket, and it belonged to Nick Stewart of Charlottesville, VA. Congratulations Nick, the check is on it's way.
In addition to the raffle tickets, we had our spare change bottle of donations, minus a few administrative costs, like a PO box, website charges, and state of VA fees, this leaves a balance close to $3000 to go towards easing the financial burden of three to six injured riders from the 2001 season.
As of right now, we have a few candidates, but would like to hear from you about anyone you know that was hurt. We don't know of every incident that occurred this year, so please alert us of anyone that comes to mind. We would like to review each case, and make a educated determination before the year's end.
[Please see Part II]