My Fundraising

It only seems appropriate that I use my expedition to India, to generate ideas on how charities collect funds for their organisation.

Childreach International have a brilliant strategy of gathering funds to help their operations. They get volunteers to carry out personal fundraisers!! Which is exactly what I am a part of. The charity have a wide selection of different challenges that you can participate in depending on what your interests are:

Challenge Events

As it can probably be seen quite clearly, the events are aimed at the younger audiences or the more physically able. In today's world, being active and healthy is a massive part of society, so generating activities that involve these aspects are going to get people interested. You are able to get great enjoyment out of physical activity, whilst raising money for charity. What's not to like! This is one of the reasons I signed up to 'India on 2 Wheels'. I get to challenge myself physically as I am a huge health fanatic, whilst fulfilling my life ambitions of changing the lives of people less fortunate than myself. The added bonuses are, being involved in an extremely interesting culture, and seeing sights that one can only dream of. By there being more than one advantage, the charity has you hooked. As I have mentioned many times before, the money side is only the by-product. The once-in-a-lifetime experience is the main advertisement and the reason people get involved. It is a great strategy to get people joining your cause.

Once you have chosen which challenge you want to partake it, the excitement starts to build and you really look forward to the journey you are about to go on. It's not just about the trip, you have a whole year of fundraising to keep you busy. This is one of the most stimulating parts of the whole experience. The expedition is your goal, and in order to get there, you have to complete a series of tasks successfully; the fundraising. Individuals really enjoy this part of the process because it is a great sense of achievement when you get to the end and the trip has been made possible. You sit back and feel really proud of yourself for sticking at it and using all the motivation and passion you have to get to where you wanted to be.

I have come to realise that the more original your fundraising idea is, the more likely you are to receive donations and support from people. On an individual basis, fundraisers are always putting on pub quizzes, cake sales, bucket shaking along the high street, car-boot sales and so on. These activities bring in small donations but they are something that occur on a frequent basis and the novelty quickly wears off. The public stop becoming interested. You need to grab their attention again by doing something they haven't seen before and make them want to get involved. As I keep saying over and over again. The public want to enjoy themselves and feel the benefit themselves. If you can offer pleasure through your activity then you'll grab attention and get people donating. This applies to charities as a whole too. They need to be coming up with new strategies to keep their audience interested and the funds flowing.

I have spent many hours researching and developing other people's idea related to effective fundraising. I have wanted to organise many different activities and events to help me reach my target of £2,500. The one problem I have come across though personally is the lack of time I have to arrange these. I have been juggling fundraising, university, organising the India trip, family life and work. There isn't much time in between these to spend hours putting together successful big events. This is why everything I have done has been on a relatively small scale. It is a shame because the ambition and drive has been there; but the lack of time has stopped me.

My fundraising has consisted of:

- Explaining to all my friends and family what I am aiming to achieve and what Childreach International are supporting, then asking for donations.

- Cake Sales around university and private requests.

- A rugby/netball match where spectators and players were asked for small donations.

- Car-boot sale.

- 'Guess how many sweets are in the jar'

- Donation from my secondary school after agreeing to create an assembly when I have completed the challenge.

- Bucket shaking in Shrewsbury Town Centre and the Cotswold.

- Bucket shaking outside Supermarkets.

- Family Activity Day (cakes, face painting, bouncy castle, climbing wall, tombola etc).

- Photoshoot

- Radio promotion.

- Facebook.

- Twitter.

- Staffs Live (Journalism student conducted an interview with me for the university website). 

- NETWORKING! Talk to people who know people! Word gets around!

Car-Boot!

Shrewsbury Bucket Shaking!

Bake Sale Outside Ember Lounge

These ideas are far from original and haven't allowed me to use my imagination and use my creativity to the best of its ability. As I am from a creative background, I wanted to use this to my advantage and base a lot of my fundraising around it. This would have given a different angle on the activities and made them interactive for others to become involved in. My photoshoot was probably the closest I got to this and it was a great success with people wanting me to do another one so they could get others to come along too. With an event such as this, I am producing something for people to keep and in the process, they are able to enjoy themselves by having their pictures taken. I am making them feel good about themselves. The fact that their money is going towards a great cause probably doesn't even cross their minds very often. The more interactive an activity is, the more of an audience it attracts.

Events related to a particular time of year are generally a success because people enjoy getting in the spirit of certain occasions. Take Christmas for example, an organisation called Star Bikers Motorcycle Club hold an annual 'Toy Run' through Stoke-on-Trent, which sees bikers from all over the country and even abroad, take part in a bike run from one point of Stoke to another. At the end of this, a fundraising event is held where there are lots of activities to get involved in, including face-painting, trade stalls, displays, bike competitions and so on. The toys donated are then collected and delivered to a range of charities and organisations that support underprivileged children. All the money raised from the event also gets split and donated to a variety of causes. It isn't just aimed at bikers either because anybody can donate toys and attend the fundraising event at the end. This opens up the target audience on a wider spectrum and allows the public with an interest to come along and support the cause too. Or just invites them to come and look at all the bikes! Even though they aren't there for the fundraising, they will still be donating unconsciously to get enjoyment. There's that word again, it comes down to it every time!

©Unknown - Toy Run

People really enjoy getting involved and having a great day. They get in the festive spirit, and happy people tend to be generous people! This organisation also do a 'Egg Run' at Easter too, which is based around the same principles of donating eggs and money to a selection of carefully chosen charities (mostly local). Even though these events are bringing in money, they cost a lot to make happen in the first place, so additional fundraising has to be done prior to the event in order for it to go ahead. "Income is derived from a variety of sources such as raffles, admission fees, merchandising profits, fund raising parties and donations." (Star Bikers). When running an event like this, you have to think of the amount it costs to hire out the hall for the fundraising event at the end, promotional/marketing costs, road closure costs etc. Funds for all of these points need to be in place before the event can be a success. You have to ensure that the activity is going to generate enough from fundraising to cover the costs and to make a profit for the charities. Using volunteers instead of paid staff keeps the costs down a tremendous amount too. 

Press coverage is beneficial to have and essential for raising a profile to make the public aware of what you are doing so they can get involved. The more attention you attract, the more your fundraising total increases. 

Another thing that is essential is letting your audience know where their money is going. At the end of the 'Toy Run', cheques are presented on stage to give evidence of the money and the public can see it being handed over personally. This is reassurance and guarantees that you will keep your supporters because they trust you.

Going back to my fundraising, so many ideas have been generated which I am keeping a diary off ready for when I begin to organise my event. I want a bank of possible activities and exhibitions within my event that are interactive and stimulating, to get my audience interested and want to get involved. The more they enjoy it, the more they promote you to others and the larger your group of supporters grows. As well as things to do on the actual event day, I want to have organised smaller fundraising events in preparation, such as creating books, calendars, photographs and art pieces to use within the main event. This will involve a group of people creating products, who will then come along to the event if possible, and bring friends and relatives. So that widens my audience further and gets more people attending and being made aware my brand and what I am trying to achieve.

Creating a donation page and submitting it to every networking site you are a member of is a very effective way of promoting yourself and alerting people to what is happening. I have a fundraiser page through BT MyDonate, but the most popular one is Just Giving, which is beneficial to donors, fundraisers and charities. It can be used as a site to gather donations and money collecting ideas if you are a fundraiser, a way to promote yourself if you are a charity, and a search tool if you are looking to give to a cause.

https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/lemsipchapman

MyDonate Page

So far, just by marketing myself to a small audience and organising a few mini activities, I have managed to raise £2000. I've still got a short way to go yet, but it is evidence that hard work and the successful organisation of events really does work in fundraising. 

Organising events on a larger scale that are original and creative, as well as marketing effectively can be an huge success and very beneficial to charitable organisations! With the right target audiences, the charities name will be propelled and become a familiar face, therefore enticing people to donate or get involved. 

I still believe that volunteer fundraisers organising events on a personal level and donating the money to the charity in a lump sum after the event is a great strategy and one that charities are going to keep relying on for many many years. It will keep on adding to the continuous flow of income and stay as an important part of the charitable process.