You should construct a limitation on your challenge since not all of the members have an equal amount of merits and the target merit. It's hard especially for those who will need a lot of merits to complete the challenge. You should specifically state the range of the merits needed to be able to participate in the rank up challenge.
I know it's a good thing for you guys to have a challenge and donate whoever's the loser to the charity but I believe that rushing something can't have a 100% success. Well, I don't think 7 days is enough for him/her unless he/she's so outstanding that can outplay some threads with amazing posts. Still, good luck to this challenge, I hope it works and be successful.
However love the idea but think in this case newbies are in better position they need only ONE merit

I don't know how rich @Tytanowy Janusz is, you know it will be easy for them to gain 1 merit and more 100$ will go to the charity.