friedel said:
As far as I've seen, the basic guideline is that all the money you raise should go to the charity and not to fund your ride. Then I guess it's just a question of picking a charity and canvassing people for support. Depending on the charity, you might be able to arrange to visit some of their projects en route.
The reason we didn't do our ride for charity is that we didn't want to be looped into definitely riding x distance. If we said we were going to bike around the world for a cause, then we'd feel like we were breaking the contract the first time we got on a train or changed our route or stayed in one spot for a long time.
It's something to think about before you ride for whatever cause -- can you follow through.
Sometimes you just can't win. I too declined offers of sponsorship from friends and colleagues partially for the very same reasons as you i.e. a sense of obligation to the sponsors' expectations rather than one's own personal vagaries. Some folk needed a lot of work on my part for them accept that I didn't want sponsorship and that if they were determined to give money to charity, could do so direct to a charity of their choice. Some people were mildly remonstrative because I was wasting an opportunity to do something for charity. I've enjoyed my two E2E rides and my Channel; to the MEd ride all the more for knowing that it didn't matter one jots whether or not I finished.
Another reason for my refusal to accept sponsorship comes from the amount of work that I had to put in to gather in the sponsorship money from the one sponsored ride that I did do. Lots of sponsors find it easy to part with the ink pledging the money but become very hard to find when one is trying to part them from their money.
A sponsored ride is mixing business with pleasure. I'm of the opinion that they are best as separate entities and not bed fellows.
Sometimes an attempt to raise one's profile can backfire. Have a look at the following link.
http://www.swldxer.co.uk/zbeverley.jpg
It gives the impression that they have claimed that they will be cycling through tropical temperatures on the worst possible roads on a ride through France and Germany to Prague. A bit of detective work revealed that that claim relates to a Malawi charity ride that might or might not have taken place in May 2007 and because of the sloppy journalism that used some out of context words lifted from the Just Giving site and a failure to update the Just Giving site giving the impression that the quest has been completed, has resulted in a whopping additional sum of £0.00 being donated after the newspaper article appeared in the past week or so.