Legacy
Legacy
Please note: this post is 58 months old and The Cares Family is no longer operational. This post is shared for information only
When I signed up to cycle 100 miles for South London Cares, I was excited to take on the two challenges; the cycling and the fundraising.
I’ve raised money for several causes in the past and I was aware that the generosity of my friends and family isn’t exhaustive. They have been amazingly supportive in the past but I knew that this time I needed to do things differently. I had to do more than set up a fundraising page and send out a few text messages... I had to get creative!
On one of my first practice/training long distance bike rides, I had a good think about what it was that I could do. I knew I wanted it to relate to the Cares family values and the volunteering I’ve been doing for the last 2 years. I knew I wanted any fundraising activity to:
Bring people together
Introduce people to new skills and knowledge
Demonstrate what South London Cares do, raising awareness of why it is such an important cause to me
What did I do?
Since I moved to London two and a half years ago, I’ve been working for Nesta, the innovation foundation. It’s a place where there’s lots of very hard-working, inspiring people but, as the organisation has grown both in the number of programmes it delivers and the number of people it employs, it’s increasingly difficult to make connections to other colleagues - whether they are based on the same floor or scattered throughout the office! During my time at Nesta, I’ve been asked on multiple occasions to share my approach to creative design in workshops, which I’ve also thought could be a good experience to develop my own skills, but I’ve never got round to organising any.
So that was it, my answer. This was a good chance to bring people together and share my skills! I organised workshops and spoke to some friends at Nesta to help deliver them. We ran Knitting, Macrame, Crochet, and Tango classes. We gave a suggested donation of £15 per class and each class lasted at least an hour with all materials included. They were fun, sociable and we all learned a lot.
What I learnt:
It is more effort than fundraising pages and bake sales (I did do them too), but it definitely pays off.
It takes time to plan a workshop and work out how you are going to deliver it, find space and spread the word to people you think will be interested. But when it comes together, people really appreciate it the effort. This had a big effect on the amount of money I was able to raise.
Working with people makes it easier, more fun and motivating
When I'd sent out an initial email saying I was doing the bike ride, one of my colleagues approached me to let me know she was also doing it, but for a different cause: Wateraid. So we decided to combine our fundraising efforts and help each other out. Forming a partnership enabled us to bounce ideas off each other and hold each other to account. Most importantly we kept each other excited and motivated to keep going!
Reflecting the charities values in your fundraising helps spread awareness of they do, and what you do
I wanted to incorporate a flavour of the types of sessions I have been volunteering at for the last couple of years in the workshops we ran. It created a conversation starter with colleagues who I hadn’t really spent time with before, and it felt really good to be able to share my experience with other people. Who knows - maybe I encouraged a few people to get involved themselves!
