How I raised £1500 in just over a month!

When I was told I needed to raise £1500 I didn't think it would be possible but people have been so kind and generous and with just 5 different activities it didn’t take long at all to surpass this original target and raise £1564.

After chatting with my Fundraising Support Officer and thinking about my networks I started thinking about how to fundraise outside of just my friends by doing activities that would include my 3 little sisters and their friends as well as my parents, my grandma and their friends.

Big Event

My flagship event which was a garden tea party with homemade sandwiches and cakes. I invited lots of my grandma and parents’ friends and created a Facebook page as well as printed invitations. ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get’ so I searched for teacups and things on Facebook marketplace and messaged people to ask if I could have things they didn't manage to sell for my fundraising party. This way I managed to get loads of tables, chairs, cups, a gazebo and also bunting, lights and other decorations. I stood by the entrance gate so people were pretty generous with the entry donation as I was there with the bucket. My sisters sold raffle tickets for £2 a ticket or 3 for £5 (except at first the youngest was selling 5 for £3 by mistake!) and the raffle prizes came from family friends- a Zumba lesson, clothes vouchers, art books etc. We designed the raffle tickets on Word and printed them off and stapled them in 3s to encourage people to just buy 3 instead of 1. Lots of people were actually very keen and bought loads. In the end we sold 100 and ran out of tickets! The event made a massive £365 and a lot of people who were invited but weren’t able to attend also donated separately on Justgiving.

Small Event

My advice would be don’t rule anything or anyone out!

Anthony

For my next event I turned my attention onto a different group of people and ran a kids’ party. We made it Easter themed and promised food and drink, traditional games , bunny ears on entry and a goody bag at the end. Luckily it was a lovely sunny day and we were able to use the village hall and the field opposite. We had sandwiches, cakes and juice and did games like ‘pin the tail on the bunny’, pass the parcel, egg hunt, egg and spoon race, sack race and bean bag race. I set up my ICS stall at the entrance with my bucket while my sisters organised the music and games and had a tombola stall. It was pretty chaotic but everyone had a fun time.

Little Extras

Thinking back to his networks Anthony looked to reach out to neighbours and friends too. Check out the video below to start thinking of your own!

I offered to do pretty much any odd jobs – gardening, car washing, babysitting, taking things to the skip, painting, cleaning- for a fixed price of a fiver an hour (plus tips/ donations welcome) and ended up with so much work I had to organise it in time slots, back to back for quite a few weeks. I put the offline cash onto the Justgiving page regularly, stating where the money was from and publicly thanking the person who had given me it so that people could see I was working hard and appreciating their contributions too.

After a few weeks I did a virtual raffle by asking people to donate online in exchange for allocated numbers and after selling 50, I picked numbers out to win the remaining prizes. The last raffle had been exclusively for those invited to the garden party but this was open to more people.

The biggest surprise was how people you don’t even expect to donate will do just that. A family friend’s dad donated extremely generously because he is a retired teacher and thought these programmes are a great way of providing some direction to young people. An ex colleague of my mother’s donated because she remembered me when I was born. A friend of my grandmother’s donated as she had lived many years in Africa. My old drum teacher donated as did a lady who works in Sexual and Reproductive Health and was happy that I would be working with the Health team in Zambia.