Call it the softer side of Gary Martin Hays, the Duluth personal injury attorney whose TV commercials promise bulldog-tough results.

Hays and the staff at his eight-attorney firm show up yearly to walk all night in the Gwinnett County Relay for Life, an American Cancer Society fund-raiser.

JESSICA MCGOWAN/special file/SPECIAL (ENLARGE)

More than $2.5 million was raised during last year's Relay for Life event in Gwinnett County.

Joey Ivansco/AJC file/Staff (ENLARGE)

A three-mile walk in Atlanta sponsored by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in 2006 had an estimated 8,000 participants.

By the Numbers • $1.64 billion Amount the top 35 fund-raising walks, bikes brought in last year • $2.5 million Amount raised in the 2007 Gwinnett County Relay for Life • $3.8 million Amount the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training raised in Georgia in 2007 • 33 cents Amount charities spent to raise $1 RELATED LINKS: • More Metro news • Metro photo galleries

"I got involved as a result of my older brother being diagnosed with colon cancer in 2000," Hays said.

"Not only that, but we have an employee who fought an 11-year battle with breast cancer. Seeing both of them waste away before our eyes got to us. We said, 'we have got to do more.' "

It is those kinds of personal connections and the lure of doing something, as opposed to just giving money to a cause, that have pushed active fund-raisers into the financial stratosphere.

The 35 top runs, walks and bikes for various causes in the United States last year brought in more than $1.64 billion, said David Hessekiel, CEO of the Run Walk Ride Fundraising Council in New York.

The Gwinnett County relay attracted 10,000 participants and pulled in more than $2.5 million in donations in 2007. That is the largest relay out of more than 4,800 nationally, including 156 others in Georgia, said Elissa McCrary, a spokeswoman with the Atlanta-based agency.

The relays brought in $407 million nationwide in 2007, she said.

That is the top of the heap for activity fund-raisers among U.S. nonprofits and charities.

Other big earners include the March of Dimes' March for Babies ($117 million nationally, $1.3 million in Georgia), the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training ($125 million nationally, $3.8 million in Georgia) and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's Walk to Cure Diabetes ($95 million nationally, $1.8 million in Atlanta).

The money the events bring in is growing at double-digit rates — 12 percent last year, according to a Run Walk Ride Fundraising Council survey. The council helps organize events.

Hessekiel attributed that growth rate to several factors: doing good is in vogue; people enjoy the activities and can make them family events, and donors are more willing to financially sponsor someone who is doing something rather than just asking for money.

"Friends and neighbors respect the effort that people put into raising the money," he said.

Participants' personal connections with those who suffer from maladies such as cancer, autism, arthritis or heart conditions also make the events popular.

McCrary said, "Everybody has a cancer story. There's almost no one you can talk to who hasn't had cancer or had a loved one who had cancer or died from cancer."

Patrick Rooney, director of research at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, said the fund-raisers get a multiplier effect. One person asks five or 10 friends and family for financial support.

"All of a sudden, [the participant's] $50 donation become $500," he said.

The events, with their T-shirts and fun factor, also raise public profiles of sponsoring agencies.

However, charities don't get the best return on the money they spend to pull off the events, Rooney said. The center's research says charities spend on average about 33 cents to raise a dollar, though some with corporate sponsors do better.

Charitable watchdog agencies give the best scores to agencies that spend 20 cents or less to raise a dollar.

"It's not the most efficient way to do fund-raising," Rooney said.

"But it can be a way of raising awareness, and you create an event that brings in more donors in the long run."