Having a tough time raising money for charity bike rides??

KonaKurt

i think my title says it all really.

I am trying very very hard indeed to raise some half decent funds in the form of sponsored donations, for my British Heart Foundation (superb charity!!) bike ride next week, but after having met, contacted and flyered over 2000 people over a period of a whole week, I have just £5 to show for it!!

I find it very hard to beleive that there are few people out there who cannot spare a one off £1 coin for my hard work and good deed. i myself am chipping in £10 of my own money here, and I am unemployed at the moment!!!!!

I think the JUSTGIVING.COM website that we sponsors are all supposed to encourage people to use to donate through, is VERY OFFPUTTING and looks quite dodgy. Even though I know it is completely safe and genuine, having used it myself to donate to a friend.

With all the above considered, CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHERE I AM GOING WRONG?!
Who else is having a tough time fundraising for BHF this year?

KonaKurt The Chaste
http://www.justgiving.com/KonaKurtTheChaste
http://www.bhf.org.uk/GET_INVOLVED/TAKE ... RIDES.ASPx

weeksy59

I am up to about £200 using justgiving myself for the Afan monster in Sept.

Just keep asking people mate. Best of luck.

thel33ter

I do the Woking Bikeathon annually and average around £260 - £320 or so with gift-aid. My Dad passes the sheet around the office, and he gives it to the managers first, who always put £20 or so in, and then everyone else feels that they have to put lots in too.

fredy

People will give money to the charities that they want to give to.. So unless you are doing something worthwhile that they want you todo, then thier charity funds will ocntinue to go where they want.

DaveHudson

About a month ago, I took part in a local ride for the teenage cancer trust and between about 15 of us we raised just shy of 2k. It can be done, but you have to get word out there.

asquithea

Your JustGiving page doesn't work in Firefox (current trunk build), so I wouldn't be able to give you any money even if I wanted to.

MrChuck

JustGiving makes it very easy for you to put the word about, but it makes it very easy for everybody else too. A couple of years back my department was pretty much flooded with emails with links to JustGiving pages, and it's not surprsing if people don't give to all of them. There are a lot of these events around too so I reckon it's quite likely that people will see a lot more requests for sponsorship than they might have done a few years ago.

But as others show it can be done!

spud-face

*sobriety edit :oops: *

KonaKurt

Firstly, god bless you Dave for the donation! It put a smile on my face That is the kind of putting money where your mouth is, that I respect

Yes, you have all riased some very good points above, and especially the rather obvious one about just how many people are doing these charity rides now, often overwhelming reletivaly few generous donors in any one office/area.... Charity madness is spreading!!

I have photocopied up some very smart looking flyers to hand out to people, and have been doing so in virtually every public place over a 20 mile radius, and canvessing down many residentual streets. Had I received one myself, I think it would have inspired me to say "well done mate" and actually donate something via Justgiving.

But I think alot of people out there, particularly the elderly, are afraid of giving away their credit card details over the web, or even of being 'scammed' by someone not genuine. This is a great shame.

I've sent over 300 flyers in the post (YES really!!) to many various key figures in my local region, including MPs, church leaders, key businesses, bike shops, social clubs, golf clubs, trade unions, hospital managers, etc etc etc. It just bugs me that none of them even so much as emailed me once, most likely because they don't REALLY care about supporting worthy charities.

As Fredy said, people are naturally self serving, and wil only care about charities that are of some direct relevance to them, often due to personal experiances.

We are all heros for trying ) Keep up the great work!

KK (not giving up yet!)
PS: I wonder if I should get in touch with one of the millionare 'dragons' from Dragons Den??!! I think I live near Mrs Meaden!

cooldad

thel33ter wrote:

I do the Woking Bikeathon annually and average around £260 - £320 or so with gift-aid. My Dad passes the sheet around the office, and he gives it to the managers first, who always put £20 or so in, and then everyone else feels that they have to put lots in too.

Being the dad in question.
We do a number of charity rides every year, but I only ask the people in the office to sponsor the Bikeathon. That way they don't get fed up with constant demands and pretty much everybody gives a bit.
Plenty of other people do similar things so if there are too many demands people just don't give. Money is tight as you may have noticed.
I also don't use justgiving and similar sites for two reasons - people are more likely to give if you ask them directly (did someone mention well intentioned blackmail??), rather than just point them to a website and hope for the best.
People are also wary of putting details, especially bank details on the internet, even if it looks like a legit site. I do all my banking etc online, and buy a lot online, but still feel wary.
The rest of the rides I either just pay the entry fee, or add a bit £10-£20 extra.
I'm almost a charity case myself anyway.

bike-a-swan

For myself I like to ask people in person, although it does make collecting it a pain. For a really big thing I can see the benefit of justgiving- a guy at my club raised a few thousand doing the south downs double and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be handling that kind of cash!

mrfmilo

Post on STW ( :shock: ), they seem to be more generous

DaveHudson

KonaKurt wrote:

Firstly, god bless you Dave for the donation! It put a smile on my face That is the kind of putting money where your mouth is, that I respect

No problem at all.

I had to laugh when we did the media stuff for our ride, two pages further on in the paper we were in, there was a group of motorcyclists who were doing a thirty mile charity ride...... Motorised....... Not exactly hard work was it That's a sunday blast not a charity event!

ExeterSimon

Email friends and family on a regular basis...change the mail to include updates on how your training is going.

Use Facebook/Twitter to raise awareness.

Organise a cake sale at work.

Take a sponsorship form with you everywhere.

Find out if the company you work for matches funds raised.

Using all the above I managed to raise £3.5k for CLIC Sargent recently doing a self organised London to Paris ride.

KonaKurt

Post on STW? What is STW?

Also, I do see the whole point of JustGiving the website, which may not be easy for many to realise as we all tend to focus on the point of 'are my card details safe on a website'.

A good point though this may be, I DO understand that asking people to donate DIRECTLY via a website (and therefore with funds going directly to the charity), is in fact safer and more secure than simply 'trusting' some individual participant to collect up lots of cash, and then hope that he does not pocket any of it for themselves!

I would never dream of doing any such thing with charity funds, but no doubt there are some in this world who given the chance, would run off with charity collection tins if they could.

As the person being sponsored, I feel happier knowing I can just point to a webpage proving all my funds are held there.

KK.

paulbox

To be honest I think you're wasting your time sending flyers to people you don't know. I get so many requests at work I would never respond to a random request. I'm not being tight I'd just rather sponsor friends.

mroli

I totally agree - why would people want to sponsor a random person, when they can just pay the money direct to the charity/support someone they know and do it that way. Unless of course there is a really good story/reason behind the fundraising.

The OP ought to concentrate on friends and family/people where he lives - I think it is a waste of time and resources to just madly flyer the world - unfortunately there is such a thing as compassion fatigue...

The Spiderman

I made £300 for Sport relief,this year,mostly through putting a link for donations on my facebbok page and by circulating a link to the donations page to my work colleagues.

mrfmilo

Single Track World

Dth1

spend a day doing bag packing at your local supermarket. It is the fastest way I found to do it.

KonaKurt

Yes, supermarket bagging is a good way of spreading the word, although again isn't that just random selection again?

I just wanted to thank the friendly old man who I got chatting to today about this event, for surprising me by reaching into his wallet and giving me another £10 for the kitty )
I didn't cath your name, but was impressed that you have done the London - Brighotn for 16 consecutive years at age 72!

I'm looking forward to my first charity ride now, but still need to get a little closer to my modest £!50 target.

KonaKurt.
http://www.justgiving.com/KonaKurtTheChaste

alfablue

Sorry if this sounds cynical (it will) and I don't wish to dampen your enthusiasm or judge your motives, which are of the highest order, but . . .

1) When BHF or any other charity ask for £150 / 500 / 1000 etc sponsorship, they really mean "you pay, you get a good ride/event/holiday"

2) The "market" (donors) are pretty much saturated with requests

3) BHF are a very successful charity, they raise loads of money for people with heart problems / heart failure, and they save the taxpayer a whole bundle of cash whilst at the same time giving the wealthy a feel-good factor whilst they evade or avoid tax at every opportunity! The very same people that will brag about their charitable giving will resent paying for the NHS.

4) Living in the 5th or 6th biggest economy in the world (depending how you count it) we really shouldn't be raising money through charities for essential health care for our own people, that is what the tax system is for; charity should be for 3rd world countries. You raise money for such charities, you absolve the voter and tax payer of responsibility for caring for our own.

5) you're doing nothing wrong (see above), but maybe just pay the £150 yourself, as was intended.

paully617

hi all,
My choice of fundraising ideas for the BHF are:
Email blasting!
Facebook etc

but the best i have found so far.....
A PAPER SPONSORSHIP FORM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Get the 1st person on there to sponsor a tenner and then peer pressure will ensure all your collegues/friends will feel guilty and bad for giving any less.

Last year i did the L2SC for the BHF and raised £230 online over 6 months as opposed to the £400 on a form in the space of a few days at work.

People can delete emails or spam filters can stop them, but they cant stop you asking face to face!!

paully617

just a thought, but would you care to take a look???

http://original.justgiving.com/raf-coningsby-l2sc-2010




cheers

KonaKurt

Alfa,

Charity bike event/rides are WELL worth doing and supporting.

I completely agree that we tax payers should already be paying into a taxation system, that government use to fund our essential NHS, and related health services. And I completely agree that this should always come first above relying on charities and charitable organisations.

But frankly if our NHS resources for heart patients are overstretched already, then sometimes in a life or death matter of cardiac health, there sometimes isn't time to quibble about who should pay for what. When you are a heart patient and in need of real medical help, you tend to take it from whoever is offering it! Fun bike events like this are an excellent way of showing that you care for such people, particularly if you have seen the death of a young child or loved one.

Besides, I dare say that the NHS is currently overloaded at the moment, by careless teenagers with their MTB injuries, which after treatment will get bragged about to their mates. Therefore any extra medical help for heart patients can't be a bad thing.

As for refering to the ride as "a paid holiday/fun day", it's not quite the same, as there are hundreds of advertised specific cycling holidays to do instead. This bike event IS a specific charity event.

I am donating a fair bit myself, but not a whole £150 as I cannot afford that! The reason why charities encourage sponsorship donation from many people, is to spread awareness of what they do, and how important it is.

Anyway, Sunday may be damp and humid, according to the weather forecast, so it's off with the dry weather tyres for me!

KK.