Dare Scholarships

I helped with the marketing and promotion of the book “One White Face” written by Hilary Corna. During her initial book tour, I had the opportunity to see Hilary tell her story of risking everything when she dared herself to pick-up and move to Japan to find a job and live and work overseas to a roomful of college students. During her presentation she issues several “Dares” to the audience in a way that warms up the crowd and sets the theme for her talk. She dares them to stand, sing, shout, scream, hug the person next to them, etc.

At one point in the program she asks them all to write a personal Dare on a note card and pin it to a board.  By the end of her book tour, she had amassed quite the collection of individual (and sometimes very personal) Dares.

Hilary then started sharing the Dares in a weekly email to her followers, and it’s become my obsession. I LOVE the concept of these Dares and the idea of people achieving them. I’ve told Hilary it should be the subject of her next book and it should be pitched as an idea for a television program or film documentary. The concept is never far from my mind and see signs (big, glowing neon signs!) everywhere that there are next steps to be taken with these Dares.

Another random idea popped into my head for Hilary and her collection of Dares. Rather than simply send it to her in an email, I thought I would put it in an open letter via this blog post and see what all of you think of the concept as well.  Add your comments and thoughts below — I know Hilary will enjoy hearing from you.

Concept:

Create a Kickstarter-type site that allows people to get their personal Dares funded.

One of the most frequent excuses for not following through on a personal Dare is “lack of funds” — your Dare-starter site would allow people to crowd-fund the expense of achieving their Dare.

Skydive, travel someplace exotic, swim with the dolphins, give coats to the homeless, etc.

A key point of differentiation between this and Kickstarter would be getting corporate sponsors to dedicate money to the site that gets awarded as Dare Scholarships. You could randomly allocate funds as you see fit, have people apply for the scholarships, or offer to match funds raised by the crowd.

You could also invite in-kind donations and trades — like an airline donating a plane ticket, or a skydiving company donating jump training, or a retail company donating jackets, etc.

What do YOU think?

Would you use a site like this to post your personal Dares and attempt to collect the monies required to make them a reality?  Would you support other users who shared their Dares and are seeking the dollars needed to put the idea into action?

Note…

Hilary was interviewed as part of the Kick Start Your Week podcast that I do with fellow Gitomer Certified Speaker Tomas Lydahl. I’ll be featuring Hilary’s interview on June 3rd, so come back to the blog on Monday to hear more about Hilary and her adventure (and her Dares!)