Posts in category "Events"
Fundraising Made Easy
Thank you for joining Hazon’s Golden Gate Ride! It’s time to flex your fundraising muscles! This weekend we make your fundraising push. Cycle up that mountain if you will.
Fundraising is easier than you think, you just have to get started! Use Hazon’s tools to craft a fundraising plan that will have you reaching your fundraising goal:
- Don’t reinvent the wheel! Use our fundraising letter writing guide.
- Start this weekend! Vamp up your fundraising and send your appeal to no less than 40 friends, family, and coworkers.
- Veteran rider Yesh Ballon shares tricks of the fundraising trade.
- What are you riding for? Read about the winners of our Mini-Grant Awards
Start this Weekend: Raise $1000 in 8 Days
The biggest secret to successful fundraising is to ask everyone you know. Think you’ve exhausted your resources? We’ve got a list to help you think of new people to ask. To get a sense of how your whole community can support you in reaching your fundraising goal, consider this recipe for How to Raise $1000 in Eight Days:
- Donate $50 to yourself
- Ask 4 family members to donate $50
- Ask 10 friends to donate $20
- Ask 5 co-workers to donate $20
- Ask 5 neighbors to donate $15
- Ask 10 people from your synagogue to donate $15
- Ask your boss for a company donation of $100 (Ask if your company will match what you raise)
- Ask 5 businesses that you frequent – like your dry cleaner, hair stylist, or favorite restaurant – to donate $25
Fundraising Tips from Veteran Riders
Yesh Ballon has been one the Golden Gate Ride’s highest fundraisers, participating in 4 rides in 3 years. What are the keys to his success?
Make appeals early and often. Money usually comes in within 48 hour of a request. The more asks, the more donations.
Be Personal. Make your letter personal and specific to you. Tell your potential funders what the Ride is all about, and tell them why you’re so excited to do it. Consider writing personalized letters to different donors to address their specific needs.
Convey Your Enthusiasm. People are inspired by enthusiasm. Talk about the ride. Talk about your training and why you have decided to take on this challenge. Your enthusiasm is contagious — it will encourage your sponsors to be generous in their support.
Be Specific. Include your fundraising goal, and make it ambitious. Put it in bold! The more you ask for, the more people give. Share what your personal financial commitment will be. People are often inspired to see your personal financial commitment and might even be willing to match it. “In addition to training, I am pledging $500 towards my fundraising goal.” Ask for a specific amount and aim high. Say “Please consider a gift of $180”—they can choose to do so, or choose to give you more/less.
Thank your donors. Buy a nice box of thank you notes (environmental or bike theme optional) and hand write–yes, with a pen–a thank you note immediately after each pledge is received, and put it in the snail mail that very day. People will become loyal supporters!
“Thank you for once again being a great support to me and Hazon. This marks my fifth ride—one in Israel and now four in California. I am increasingly impressed by Hazon’s mission and the people engaged in it. Your gift makes their work possible.”
What are you riding for? Mini-Grant Awards Winners Announced
A portion of the fundraising from this year’s ride will be made available as small grants for Jewish and environmental projects on the West Coast. We’re pleased to announce this year’s winners!
13% of YOUR fundraising goes to support these amazing projects:
Milken Community High School
The MCHS Urban Farm Co-op, initiated with help from a Hazon grant two years ago, is a sustainable gardening and food justice initiative at Milken Community High School in Los Angeles. The Co-op plans to expand its garden to a minimum of thirty-six pallets across campus, continuing to connect students to their food sources, to the earth, and to their own potential.
Congregation Beth Sholom
Congregation Beth Sholom seeks to enhance and build upon its existing garden and landscape for our preschool and Hebrew school students, parents, and congregants. Further developing our small outdoor garden will build community around the shared experience of nurturing life and growing the food that is central to so many of the Jewish traditions we celebrate.
Jewish Learning Works
The Nosh Niche is a Jewish cooking project embedded within Jewish LearningWorks’ Shalom Discovery family engagement initiative. The Nosh Niche brings to life issues of food justice and farm-to-table Jewish values cooking lessons, discussion guides, and take-home recipes, along with a cooking feature on our website.
Kehillah Jewish High School
Kehillah seeks to revamp, expand, and improve its small school garden, which was funded and built by a student-led initiative last year. This garden has already begun contributing produce to Kehillah’s meals program, which feeds about 100 people per day with delicious vegetarian food. By growing the garden’s size, as well as its uses on campus, Kehillah can cut down on its food miles, improving overall campus sustainability while also serving as a valuable learning tool.
Temple Emanu-El Preschool
Being in San Francisco, with limited outdoors space, we have been grappling with how to include natural sciences with a focus on ecology to our children and families. This year we have been successful with outdoor education programs such as walking trips through the nearby Presidio and Family Education in Golden Gate Park with a naturalist. Through this project, we hope to bring tanks with natural habitats for animals as well as grow lights and indoor gardening to all of our classrooms.
Peninsula Temple Beth El Green Team
Holistic cooking classes through the ages and stages of life. The classes will focus on various temple groups that will impact our youngest members through our seniors. The emphasis will be to introduce to the audiences the importance of choosing healthy, sustainable ingredients, eating in the season, the nutrients in food and our food supply chain.
Israel Ride Info Session in Philadelphia
Discover how the Israel Ride can be your next adventure
Thursday, May 9th, 7:00 pm
Germantown Jewish Centre
400 W Ellet St Philadelphia, PA 19119
What does it feel like to cycle on the Israel Ride? Hear from David Lehrer- Executive Director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Israel Ride alum- about cycling through Israel, the Middle East’s environmental challenges, and the potential for regional cooperation at the Arava Institute.
Bring your friends with you | All are welcome at this event!
Challah Memories: Hazon Food Festival Rocky Mountains
My first memory of challah is the smell of it toasting, and then toasting some more, until my grandpa had burned it enough that he would then stand by the kitchen sink and perform his ritual scraping off of the blackened edges. Grandpa ate challah with breakfast every day, and he burned it every day.
He may not have known that burning at least some challah hearkens back to the time of the Temple. The word “challah” refers to a bit of baked dough that Jews gave to the priests as a weekly Sabbath offering. To commemorate the ancient law of setting aside “challah,” some Jews to this day separate a small portion of prebaked dough, which they bless and burn. “Challah” means “offering,” and the sweet bread itself is now also known by that name.
Funny enough, I learned that history from a book that spells the bread’s name differently: “The Hallah Book,” by Freda Reider. It’s a book I’ve had since 1988, when I got it at a Hadassah book fair, captivated by its many intriguing, artistic suggestions on the shaping of the bread.
Lately I’ve been having fun trying out challah recipes and designs, as I prepare to lead a session on challah at Hazon’s Food Festival: Rocky Mountains, an all-day foodie extravaganza to be held at the Denver Jewish Day School on April 28. My “students” will get to shape dough and then take it home to bake. But I’ll bring some finished samples for tasting, too, and in a perfect pairing, the challah will be enriched by butter that my co-presenter, Rachael Goldman, will demonstrate how to make by shaking the right ingredients in a jar. Thus, we’re calling our session “Shake and Bake: D.I.Y. Butter and Challah.”
In other challah news, the festival includes a challah contest, which all are invited to enter. Just bring your homemade challah to the festival, where judges will decide who makes the best challah in the region. Winning includes prizes as well as bragging rights. If you’ve not entered the contest yourself, you might be asked to be one of the many tasters who will rate their favorites.
So, Sunday the 28th will be a “Challah-day” at the Hazon Food Festival, a day to break bread together – but we won’t burn it.
~~Lorrie Guttman, former Florida resident and longtime food editor of The Tallahassee Democrat, who now does her baking at altitude
Israel Ride Info Session in Atlanta
Discover how the Israel Ride can be your next adventure
Tuesday April 30, 7:30 pm
Hosted by 2008 Israel Rider Michael Weinstock
What does it feel like to cycle on the Israel Ride? Hear from David Lehrer- Executive Director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and Israel Ride alum- about cycling through Israel, the Middle East’s environmental challenges, and the potential for regional cooperation at the Arava Institute. Meet other Ride alumni as they gather together to reminisce about the incredible experiences they had on the Israel Ride.
Bonus: Alon Tal, Founder of the Arava Institute, will be speaking Tuesday over lunch (11:30 am – 1:30 pm) at Atlantic Station about Israeli Environmental Policy. For more information, contact Beth Gluck at (404) 236-8990 x851.
Bring your friends with you; all are welcome at this event.
Israel Ride in NYC: With Nigel Savage and David Weisberg
Discover how the Israel Ride can be your next adventure
Wednesday, May 8th, 7:30 pm
Hosted by Nigel and Liz Savage
RSVP for details
The Israel Ride: For Yourself. For Israel. For Peace.
Meet and hear from:
- Nigel Savage, Hazon and Israel Ride Founder
- David Weisberg, CEO of Hazon
- David Rendsburg, Ride alum and 8-time staff member of the Ride
- Annie Jacobs, former Program Assistant at the Arava Institute (and current Dairy Apprentice at Isabella Freedman)
- Arava and Israel Ride alumni
They will speak about cycling through Israel, the Middle East’s environmental challenges, and the potential for regional cooperation at the Arava Institute.
The Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride is a weeklong cycling adventure from Jerusalem to Eilat, including 5 fully-supported riding days and a Shabbat rest day.
Bring your friends with you | All are welcome at this event!
Israel Ride & Yom Yisrael Festival in Palo Alto
Discover how the Israel Ride can be your next adventure
Kol Emeth Yom Yisrael Festival
Sunday, April 28th, 10:30am – 1:30pm
4175 Manuela Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94306
RSVP for details
What does it feel like to cycle on the Israel Ride? Come to the fourth and final family-friendly Kol Emeth Yom Yisrael Festival. Learn about the Arava region of Israel and how riding through the Negev desert on the Israel Ride can help improve regional cooperation and solve the Negev’s environmental challenges!
Highlights:
- Work in the Arava Medical Center
- Meet animals of the desert
- Harvest and sample Israeli produce
- Visit Ben Gurion’s grave
- Learn about Bedouin-Jewish joint projects
- Study about water in the desert
- Splash in the Dead Sea
- Enjoy a falafel lunch
FREE for Religious School Students & Parents
$10 for other Kol Emeth Members & Guests
(Falafel lunch included!)
Bring your friends with you | All are welcome at this event
Patriots’ Day Ride
Patriots’ Day & Boston Marathon Ride
April 15th, 7:00 AM
Newton, MA
Join your friends on this special morning for a great ride in (hopefully) beautiful Spring weather, as the Marathon fans and vendors set up:
Meet at 7:00 AM in the Newton Library Parking Lot at the corner of Comm Ave and Homer St and leave about 7:15- Feel free to meet there or along the way
- Ride the Marathon Route out towards Hopkinton (~19 miles) and back
- Finish on arrival back in Newton (~19 miles) or continue all the way into Boston (~26 miles)
Download a Route Map of the Marathon as a guide
Please email Howie Rodenstein, chair of the Arava Institute Hazon Israel Ride,
if you are interested.
Israel Ride Info Session: Los Angeles
Discover how the Israel Ride can be your next adventure
Sunday, May 19th, 5:00 pm
Bike Improve
10929 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90025
What does it feel like to cycle on the Israel Ride? Hear from Sherry Winston- 2011 Israel Rider- about cycling through Israel, the Middle East’s environmental challenges, and the potential for regional cooperation at the Arava Institute.
Bring your friends with you | All are welcome at this event.
JCC of Northern Virginia 4th Annual Cycle Fest
May 19, 2013, 8 AM – 12 PM
Fairfax Corner
8900 Little Rive Tpke
Fairfax, VA 22031 Map
Benefitting Wounded Warriors Project and Hazon
Riders should be experienced; suggested minimum age is 12. In case of inclement weather (wet roads), rides will be cancelled. For safety, all riders must wear biking helmets.
Beginner/Intermediate – 30 miles
Intermediate/Advanced – 50 miles
Advanced – 65 miles
Registration fee includes:
- Cycle Fest t-shirt
- Rest stop with tasty treats
- SAG vehicle support
- Mechanical support
- Light food at the end of the ride
- Free giveaways
Fee: $50/ $45 JCCNV member
Before May 5: $45/ $40 JCCNV member
With special thanks to The Bike Lane, Earl and Jeff Klioze DDS, and Grant Thornton.
Contact: Paula Cole | 703-537-3049 | PaulaC@jccnv.org
Israel Ride Info Session: Larchmont, NY
Discover how the Israel Ride can be your next adventure
Sunday, April 21st, 4:00 pm
Hosted by Israel Ride alumni Amy Goldman and Joel Brill
Hosts Amy and Joel, celebrating a successful Israel Ride in the Red Sea
What is cycling like on the Israel Ride?
Hear from Rabbi Michael Cohen, Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Friends of Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. He will talk about cycling through Israel, the Middle East’s environmental challenges, and the potential for regional cooperation at the Arava Institute.
Bring your friends with you | All are welcome at this event.
