 Bacup
and Rawtenstall Grammar School's Sponsored Walk
"The most
effective way to fundraise" — Emma Gauntlett, BRGS
The children of Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School in Lancashire
went online to raise funds for their new sports hall.
Former pupils, local businesses and parents all contributed
towards the £1.2m target, and pupils themselves got involved
when the whole school embarked on a 17.7km sponsored walk.
BRGS joined Justgiving to enable the children to collect sponsorship
easily and cost effectively.
BRGS pupils were encouraged to create online fundraising pages
in IT lessons, and many more did so in their own time, with a
total of 179 enthusiastic pupils creating a Justgiving page.
The teachers led the way by building their
own pages and creating a brilliant 'How to build a page' guide
that appeared on the school's own website. After the walk, teachers
congratulated all participants on the site at: http://www.brgs.org.uk/news/walk05/index.asp.
"I think the pupils really enjoyed creating
the pages," said Emma Gauntlett, development director at
the school. "There were some very imaginative ones — though
we did have to exercise some control over what they put on them!"
BRGS raised £2,771 through Justgiving,
including £481 in automatically
reclaimed Gift Aid. Funds raised online represented more than
30% of the total £9,000 raised by the walk.
 Emma said: "The service was fantastic. It
was really useful, especially when so many people were doing
the sponsored event, because of the ability to claim back tax.
Reclaiming Gift Aid manually on every donation made through the
paper sponsorship forms was time consuming and tedious work."
Each pupil had a fundraising target of £25, but those that used
Justgiving to collect funds averaged almost double that amount.
The average raised per Justgiving fundraising page was £46, with
top fundraiser Katie Taylor raising an impressive £301.54.
"We are hoping to use Justgiving for
regular giving to the school now," said Emma.
"Obviously there are charges but the
cost of the time it takes to process donations manually more
than makes up for it. We would definitely encourage other schools
to use Justgiving. It proved to be the most effective way to
fundraise."
BRGS has shown how effective the Justgiving service can be for
schools. Teachers inspired a passion for raising money by providing
pupils with engaging online fundraising tools that made it fun
and easy to collect sponsorship and the school saved itself the
hassle and cost of processing offline donations and manually
reclaiming Gift Aid. Most importantly, Justgiving enabled pupils
to raise more money that they would have been able to via traditional
means.
Next, the students at BRGS are attempting to break the Guinness
World Record for the longest netball match by playing for 55
hours to raise money for Cystic
Fibrosis Trust and Breakthrough
Breast Cancer.
www.justgiving.com/brgs/raisemoney
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