Posters
pay dividends for Ovingdean Hall
"It's
a great facility and it saved us a lot of the admin work"
Ovingdean
Hall School has proved fundraising needn't be a hassle..
By organising a simple poster campaign in
local gyms, shops and health clubs the school found four cyclists
to take part in a sponsored bike ride through Vietnam and Cambodia
and have raised nearly £9,000.
Like many schools, Ovingdean doesn't
have a large fundraising budget or the resources to organise
major fundraising events. But anyone can raise funds for any
event online with Justgiving, so time and budget constraints
are no barrier to increasing revenues.
"We're a small fundraising office with
two people, one of whom is part-time," said Fundraiser Amanda
Jordan. "Most
of our funds are raised from trusts and foundations, and via
traditional offline routes like Direct Mail and regular gifts
from friends of the school."
"I felt there was real potential to
raise more money from new sources through sponsored events, so
we joined Justgiving and contacted a specialist charity challenges
travel company for the Saigon
to Angkor Wat bike ride and set about advertising it in our
local area.
"Three of the four people who responded created Justgiving fundraising
pages. The majority of donations came in through Justgiving -
£7,477 of the £9k total - which was incredible."
The money raised online comprised 147 individual donations and
included £1,405.71 in Gift Aid. Because Justgiving processes
donations and reclaims Gift Aid automatically, Amanda was saved
the time-consuming job of handling cash and cheques, and filling
in 147 R68 forms.
"It's a great facility and it saved
us a lot of the admin work," Amanda said.
"The feedback from our supporters has
all been positive. They found the site to be a great tool and
it helped them raise more money than they would have been able
to otherwise. They wouldn't have been nearly as motivated to
raise funds if they hadn't been able to use Justgiving to display
their fundraising target and make it easy to email their friends.
"We're planning to push Justgiving whenever we recruit people
to take part in a fundraising event in the future."
Offering fun and easy-to-use online fundraising tools not only
helps recruit new supporters, it helps them raise more money
and cuts your admin burden. As Amanda proved, a bit of nous and
a Justgiving membership makes fundraising for schools a stroll
in the playground.
www.justgiving.com/ohs/raisemoney/
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