Extreme Fundraisers Take Charity to the Limit

Forget extreme sports. If you want people to really applaud while you take your favorite leisure pursuit to the limit, try extreme fund-raising. Just a decade ago, the riskiest thing people would do to raise money for charity might have involved pulling hot cookies from an oven. These days compassion fatigue has forced fund-raisers to drive themselves to increasingly outlandish deeds -- climbing the world's highest mountains, motorcycling at breakneck speed across continents, or jumping out of airplanes.