Daniel, the Groupon employee participating in the “Walk of Shameless” challenge for charity, walked with Team Carl for five days. You rallied, you tweeted, you tuned in to your televisions. Thanks to everyone’s efforts, Team Carl won the competition! They will split the grand prize of $50,000 and earned $13,600 for their charity, The ALS Development Institute. We asked Daniel about his time on the treadmill:
Tell us about your experience!
The experience itself was almost surreal. I never thought in a million years we would get picked to compete, much less win it. We put everything we had into this competition for five days straight and raised an unprecedented amount of buzz and support for ALS. It is quite amazing to see the effect you have when you really reach out to people and humbling to see how many were willing to show their support and spread the word.
What was the toughest part?
The hardest part was keeping all our followers/supporters engaged and voting throughout the entire competition. It was easy to spark interest the first few days through social media, but you can only send out so many emails and so many tweets about the same thing before people start to disconnect. We were constantly trying to come up with creative ways to get our message out and engage supporters. (Also, walking while simultaneously typing on an iPad and talking on the phone is quite a challenge!)
What was most memorable?
The most memorable part was when they announced the winner at the very end. Going into it we knew we were in third place based on the number of tweets received. We had had our fair share of celebrity tweets and endorsements, but a few other teams really pulled ahead in the Twitter voting and we didn’t think we even had a shot. My heart skipped a beat when they announced we won. It turns out we had had over 11,000 text message votes–the next closest team had 6,000.
How can we donate to the cause?
Although “Walk of Shameless” has ended, ALS-TDI is still in need of funds to aid their research to find a cure. If you’re interested in making a donation to ALS-TDI or in other ways you can support this pioneering organization, please follow the link below:
Thank you to everyone who showed their support throughout the entire competition! It is because of YOU that we were able to donate $13,600 to ALS-TDI to go towards research to hopefully one day finding a cure for this horrible disease.
For more images and video, visit the “Walk of Shameless” website. Congratulations Team Carl!
