Charity Fundraising

I want to start off this post by saying that I've already investigated this online and discussed it with several different people already. I am posting this here to see if anyone else has any experience with running/hosting a fundraising event for charity. I'll give a little background. A few months ago a friend approached me to pledge $1 for every mile that they ran for breast cancer research. I happily pledged and then realized that I would love to do something like that, but I am not a runner.

Over the next few weeks I came up with a plan to raise money for a charity of my choice. I decided to go with Make-A-Wish for numerous reasons, one of which is they will help get a website/fan page set up to accept donations. My plan is similar to the marathon idea, only I am a hiker. My goal is to hike the 46 high peaks in New York in 46 days. I am working with companies to "sponsor" a peak for $1000 each. I have left myself significant lead time (I plan on doing the hike the summer/fall of 2012) to raise funds and prepare for the trip. In addition to the sponsoring a peak, for individuals I have developed a "Per Peak" pledge where individuals can sponsor a smaller amount ($1-2 each) for each peak that I complete. My goal is $46,000.

At the summit of each peak I will take a paper and write the peak's name, the elevation and "Thank You" to the company/family/individual who sponsored the peak. These pictures will be put on a website that I'm working on developing.

I know that the people at this forum have a huge variety of experiences that I do not. Hopefully someone has assisted or run one of these marathon's for charity in the past. I'm looking for information about how to go about asking for donations, who to go to, etc.

I'm even debating if $1000 per peak is too much for companies or if I should lower it to $500 per peak (or even $100). Do you think that the goal of raising $46,000 is unrealistic? Any help or suggestions are appreciated. So far I've set up an email for the charity event and contacted Make-A-Wish. I'm working on getting some basic facts about the hike (I already have a write up about Make-A-Wish) that I can put on a facebook page that I'm setting up. I've also contacted my former employeer (when I was a kid), Eastern Mountain Sports about helping out where they can. Now I'm trying to develop the website and a cover letter of sorts to provide to people about the event. Thank you for everyone's help in advance!