Earlier in the year, we saw one of our friends asking for contributions to their Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure team (Plus Inc.) and two of us here at Homeland Secure IT supported them with small contributions.

After discussing it further, we decided to form our own team and participate in the 5K walk ourselves. It made total sense, as we all have people in our lives that have been affected by this horrible thing (Breast Cancer)! We had never done anything like this before so we really didn’t know where to start other than reading the “Team Handbook”… We named our team for the Google On Main (We are Feeling Lucky) movement, hoping we would get a few contributions from those who participated in that uber cool event. We didn’t print T-Shirts because there were only a few of us, and we opted to give the money instead as a contribution.

We emailed our friends, family and clients, posted it to Facebook, posted it to Twitter, to the point of being annoying. I personally sent out 90 individually addressed emails a few days before the race. We blogged about it. Yet we still couldn’t get the results was hoped for. We had set our goal at $5000, thinking that would be “easy”. We were wrong. Though we did manage to get over $1300 dollars in contributions!

Multiple issues were working against us reaching that goal. A bad economy was probably the largest problem. And close behind that was the fact we started late in the game. Most of the other teams had already been formed, and THOUSANDS of people were hitting up everyone they knew. I was told “We already gave” by many people, and “We are walking too” by dozens! I believe there were 6000 people or so participating in this walk! An awesome show of support for this cause!

I would like to thank one person by name, Michelle Varner, Greg’s wife, who managed to get the majority of our contributions! She is awesome and her hard work is appreciated. Our team consisted of me (John M. Hoyt), Pamela Hoyt, Greg Varner and Michelle Varner. (Our son and daughter were signed up, but slept in!)

From the bottom of our hearts, I would like to thank every single person who contributed to our team, or to this cause in general! Together, we can help find a cure!!!!

We will likely do this again for 2011, as the majority of the clients we provide computer and IT service to here in Greenville / Upstate are female and I can think of no better way to show them how much they mean to us than to support the Race for the Cure!