LEWISTON — Before the starting gun blasts Saturday morning — kicking off the Dempsey Challenge’s walking, running and cycling events — some silly or irreverent events will be celebrating weeks of action and thousands of dollars already raised.

“If it’s not illegal or immoral, I don’t mind doing it,” said Shannon Gilmartin, a Buffalo-area woman who has personally raised $8,000 and is serving as fundraising ambassador for the challenge. Much of her money is being raised from pledges tied to her planned 100-mile bike ride.

Not all of it, though.

Gilmartin raised $175 when she sat in an inflatable kiddie pool and let her family plop ice cream and syrup on her head, creating what she calls a “human ice cream sundae.”

People pledged money on the website, mydunktank.com.

“It seemed like a good idea until I was sitting in a pool of chocolate syrup and caramel and ice cream in my 50-degree garage,” Gilmartin said.

She had tried and failed to get interest on eBay for shaving a logo into the side of her head. The ice cream worked, though. Her daughter even donated $25 to the sundae plan, thinking the sight would be hysterical.

“I won’t get tattoos because I hate needles,” she said. “But ice cream, washes off.”

Gilmartin’s off-center approach isn’t unique — though it may be the gooiest idea this year.

People are selling or raffling off quilts, pillows, cookbooks, T-shirts and Red Sox tickets. One group has been selling raffle tickets at $25 each. The prize: a life-sized and autographed cardboard cutout of challenge creator and actor Patrick Dempsey.

Flagship Cinemas in Auburn is holding a movie night with two movies chosen by Dempsey himself: 2007’s “Enchanted” and 1987’s “Can’t Buy Me Love.”

The Auburn-Lewiston YMCA held a week of events that included a 12-hour walk/run and four hours of cycling.

The proceeds from every event, like the challenge itself, benefits The Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope & Healing.

Many people are being inspired to undergo their own fundraisers by the challenge’s new rules, which created minimum fundraising requirements for participation, challenge spokesman Mark Turcotte said.

Cyclists must pay a $75 entry fee and reach a $150 minimum. Runners and walkers must pay a $35 entry fee and the same minimum.

And some people have just fallen into successful fundraisers.

People at Rinck Advertising were simply selling T-shirts with the logo of their Dempsey Challenge team — “I (upside-down heart) Cancer” — when they discovered they had a hit.

They loaded the logo on their Facebook site and sold 100 T-shirts in two days. They have gone to a second printing and plan to sell the shirts at $10 each at this weekend’s event. All proceeds will go to the challenge, said Laura Davis, the Auburn company’s vice president and principal.

Davis, a six-time cancer survivor, came up with the logo.

All those pink and yellow ribbons and bracelets — the current symbols of cancer — seem much too swell for the cancer she endured, she said.

“My cancer isn’t yellow or pink,” she said. “It’s really black.”

Davis survived lymphoma 21 years ago. The radiation that fought the cancer also weakened her in places, leading her to contract thyroid cancer and endure four bouts of skin cancer.

“It sucks as a disease,” she said.

The T-shirt and the logo express that anger.

“Let’s just say it like it is,” Davis said. “I hate cancer.”

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