need ideas for fundraising

[poppy]

i recently did a 24 hour sponsored silence for the ehlers danlos syndrome group which raised £165 and now i'd like to do some sort of fundraiser for the HMSA but i can't think of what i could do so i thought i would start a topic here in th hope some of you will have some suggestions for me and for anyone else who would like to do a fundraiser. any ideas would be welcome, even things like doing a marathon, i cant run, can barely even walk but that could be a possibility for someone else. all i've thought of so far are:

- 24 hour silence (i've done that and couldnt do it again because my youngest dog sulked for a few days afterwards!)
- marathon (i can't run)
- walk (can't get very far walking and some days can barely make it to the bathroom from my room which is right next to the bathroom!)
- coffee morning (my mum doesnt like people she doesnt know or lots of people in the house and the nearest village halls are inaccessible)
- car boot sale (their is a car boot sale held every 2 weeks nearby but i'd need my mum to help me and she hates doing car boot sales)

so as you can see i havent got many ideas and those i do have i cant do for various reasons. i keep trying to covince my mum to do a car boot sale but so far no luck which is a shame because i've got loads of stuff could be sold and i reckon i could raise quite a lot if i ever convince her

[hannah]

What about e-baying the car boot stuff?

[poppy]

good idea but i live in the middle of nowhere so getting things to the post office to post them would be difficult

[jojackson]

Do you live near a post box (or could you ask someone to take things to the post box for you)? If so, you could auction things that would are small enough to fit into the post box, such as books, CDs, jewellery, etc. and you can print postage online from the Royal Mail website. I use this facility a lot, as it seems less of a burden to ask someone to put a couple of things in the post box on their way somewhere than to ask them to queue and pay at the post office.

If you're feeling ambitious, you could set up a committee to organise a local ball or an event at a local bar or restaurant. Lots of bars, at least here in London, will allow you to hire the venue as long as you guarantee a minimum spend, and a few of them will donate any money over and above that to the charity. You could see if a local bar or restaurant would give you a good deal for a charity event. You could combine this with karaoke or disco dancing, or Wii dance/sport/mariokart contests or a quiz night. If wheelchair access is difficult, what about trying a local library or school hall, as these usually have good access? Local schools might like to get involved in fundraising for a small charity.

What about decorating jam jars or other containers and giving them to people to collect their small change for charity? It's easy for people to do, but it all adds up. You could combine this with the local school idea, perhaps going in to talk about HMS/EDS in an assembly and then encouraging the children to decorate containers to collect small change.

Some cinemas will let you hire the venue, and might give you a discount (or even let you have the venue free of charge) if you explain that it's for a charity event. They'll charge for showing the film, but you could get that money back if you can encourage enough people to come.

Organise a five-a-side football tournament, or pool, darts, beach touch rugby (I'm sure you get the idea). People pay to play or to enter a team. You could encourage people to come in fancy dress for each team and give small prizes.

Skydive? If you're not up to doing one, what about trying to convince a local celebrity/MP/company boss/someone else high profile to do it?

Sorry this is so long! I just kept having more ideas - I hope some of them are helpful.

Jo

[poppy]

hmm might be able to sell small things on ebay then if i can get my stepdad to connect my computer to the printer. we do have a post box just along the road although it is a very small post box, i'm gonna have to take things along to the post box like books and dvds and check whether they'll fit, no doubt the village gossiper will see me putting books and stuff half way into the post box then pulling them out and so their'll be some fantastic gossip about me soon
not sure i'd be any good at organising anything big, think i'll go for smaller things first, work m way up to bigger things! although a singing competition might be an idea, i'm rubbish at singing but love singing so bought a singstar game for playstation 3 awhile ago. if i ever figure out how to connect ps3 to playstation network i could download more songs and then hopefully more people would enter a singing competition
you had me trembling at just the thought of doing a talk about hms i get shy just meeting one new person, dont think i could talk to loads of people
decorating containers for people to collect change sounds like a good idea though
cinema is a good idea but i live about 30 miles away from a cinema and my knees and hips would give me hell if i sat through a film and then travelling back too i'd be in agony. plus i have no friends to invite and so couldnt be sure that i'd be able to get enough people to come
will have to think about who i might be able to convince to go skydiving

thanks for the ideas

[dragondee]

Another thing you could do is giving out tubes of smarties and asking people to fill them with 20p pieces and give them back.
They did this at my local shopmo.
Dragondee