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John Corneille, an attorney from DeKalb, Illinois, with retinitis pigmentosa, admits that until the 2007 Chicago VisionWalk, he hadn’t been much of a donor to the Foundation Fighting Blindness. He did get the FFB newsletter, InFocus, and attended some of the Chicago Chapter meetings and a couple of VISIONS Conferences. It was actually John’s wife, Pam, who suggested he put together a team for the 2007 VisionWalk. And early on in organizing his walk team and fundraising efforts, John wasn’t sure who would donate or how much they would give. “We didn’t know how people would respond or what fundraising goals to set,” he says.
 But John and his family were pleasantly surprised by the success of their initial efforts. He recalls, “I put out an e-mail solicitation to people in my address book, and immediately got responses. And they were generous responses. We expanded the list from there and things just kept growing and growing. We changed our fundraising goal numerous times.” He and his team of 40 ultimately raised $30,000 from about 250 individual donors for the 2007 walk.
Momentum was clearly a big factor in the Corneille’s success; excellent results early on inspired them to expand their outreach further. John says that the biggest key to his fundraising was not being afraid to approach people. He adds, “People are more apt to give to a cause when a person they know is associated with it.”
The Corneilles were also resourceful and creative in their outreach. John contacted high school friends who he hadn’t spoken with in 30 years. Both of his daughters, Jillian and Megan, recorded VisionWalk public service announcements for radio. John took to the road and gave presentations to local service organizations. Several clubs at a local high school got together and raised $1,000 after John spoke to their honor society. He says, “I know the fundraising is a lot of work, but I can’t golf anymore. I can’t do a lot of things, because of my vision loss. So, I need ways to funnel my energy.” He even put together a 30-second video public service announcement that was broadcast more than 150 times, over two weeks, on local Comcast cable channels such as ESPN, The Discovery Channel, and The Weather Channel.
For the 2008 VisionWalk, John’s strategy was to grow the team to increase contributions. The strategy worked well. His team of 120 people raised nearly $70,000 and the number of individual donors increased to 700.
John is no stranger to success. Despite being legally blind in high school, he was all-conference in both baseball and football. He went on to college at Illinois Wesleyan, law school at Valpraiso, and was a partner in a law firm for 18 years.
But in 2005, he left the firm to go to a school for the blind to learn computer skills for the visually impaired. Spending five months away from his wife and kids was tough, but he says, “I learned what I needed to learn to keep on going.” John is now in private practice providing family, elder, and estate legal services.
At the VISIONS Conference in August, John gave an informative presentation about fundraising to a group of chapter leaders from all over the country, sharing his enthusiasm for raising money for research. He comments, “Fundraising for FFB has been very rewarding with all the people I have met and the good we are doing. Our opportunities are limitless.”
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