I signed up for my first event with TNT this year. It's the Lake Placid half-marathon on June 14th. I started my fundraising campaign on January 20th and to date I've raised $1,423.94 of the $2,500 I am committed to raise (something I'm pretty proud of).So far these are all donations I've received via electronic fundraising - no paper letters have been mailed, and no in-person payments have been made yet.

Here's a few of the things I've been doing:

1 - email through the TNT fundraising site. This wasn't all that effective. I think mostly because of SPAM filters on email accounts trapping the email before they even made it to the recipient.

2 - direct emails from me. - This has accounted for about 10% of the donations so far.

3 - facebook - This easily accounts for 90% of the donations I have raised so far. On a daily basis I change my status to request donations for everyone in my social network, and on a weekly basis I recap how much I have earned so far in a post on my wall. For people who have facebook accounts this will make sense. Those of you who do not have facebook accounts I really suggest you get one and start tapping into your friends. You can import email contacts and facebook will automatically link you to those friends who are already members.

4 - Twitter - nothing generated from here yet, but another avenue to get the word out about your fundraising

5 - ETSY - I am really hoping this takes off soon. Etsy is a store that allows artists to put their wares up for sale. Popular among jewelry makers and other artisans it is also a site where you can find paintings, photographs and other pieces of art. I am a photography hobbyist, so I decided to put some prints up there and any profit I make off of them I will be donating to the LLS as part of my fundraising until I complete the race in June. If you want to see what it looks like go here: http://mattallen.etsy.com

6 - Blog - I have a blog for my photography: http://mattallenphotography.blogspot.com that I have placed a badge on indicating that i am running in a half marathon with TNT for the LLS. Some hits have been generated from this link, but none have resulted in any donations.

So out of all of the above electronic-based approaches I would say that facebook has produced the most money. I don't have a large group of connections on facebook (maybe around 190) but they span a lot of different periods in my life from friends I knew in grade school to business friends I've made within the last year. Once you get on facebook you will be surprised at how many people you find.

I'm going to start my real-world fundraising soon, and hopefully I'll have my committment reached by the time February ends. 

Hope this helps some people get started!