Charity Ride - London to Paris for Breast Cancer...

kn0bby

Hi Guys.

My sister has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer at a young age of 34, she started her first Chemo the Friday before Christmas. I am feeling very helpless and because of this have decided to do a charity bike ride. I've looked at a few different options, like John O Groats to Lands End but this might be a bit far, so been considering London to Paris. I have a team of about 4 people so far who are interested in joining me, hopefully I can increase this with a couple of other friends I can hassle. I want to do it somewhen between May-June.

I've been looking at some of these organised event charity sites, where you pay a small deposit and then must raise at least £1500 ish, I see some of the sites keep it a secret that they take £500-650 per person to cover costs, but some are quite honest about it. Either way £500-£650 a person isn't that quite a lot of money? Sounds alot to me..

Thinking about organising it myself, getting a driver with a van to support/film us, Booking hotels, euro tunnel etc..

Just wondered if anyone else had considered this and if they saved any money?

Thanks in advance for your comments/support.

Cheers

Dave.

Ride2Raise

Hi Dave,

I'm new to Bike Radar but I spotted your post and thought you might be interested in a ride the company I work for are running on the first of June.

We are Ride2Raise - http://www.ride2raise.co.uk - and we manage charity and corporate rides., We do, obviously, take some money to cover costs but this is a lot less than what you have mentioned in this case. I'd be happy to go into more detail about why organisers take the money they do for these rides if you're interested but, in short, in our case the charities agree these costs and pay them to us so all the money raised goes direct to them. They work on a 3 or 4 to 1 return on their investment and are well aware that money raised is money they wouldn't ortherwise receive.

On June 1st we have a very challenging one-day ride in aid of The Royal Marsden cancer charity. The ride will be 192 miles in one day!
n.b. there is also a shorter option of 96 miles.

You can read about the ride at http://www.raisemagazine.co.uk/go-the-distance-with-fitnaturally-for-the-royal-marsden/.

Registration is only £49 and the minimum fundraising target is £500.

It will be a great ride and we'd love to have you and your friends on board if it's of any interest.

We have plenty of other rides through the year too but this sounds good for you as it's for Royal Marsden.

Doing it yourself is fun too but there's an awful lot to organise!

Tim

kn0bby

Thanks for the reply.. I am really keen to do London to Paris though..

Ride2Raise

I understand that, a lot of people are.

We don't currently have a LtoP on this year's calendar. However, if you have a charity in mind and can raise six riders we could approach the charity and organise one on their behalf if you don't fancy doing it yourself.

Happy to chat if you're interested, even if it's just to give some advice.

chaos75

I did this in September 2012 for the exact reasons you stated, I felt it was like asking some of the sponsors to pay for me to have a holiday! Actually found some other guys on this forum doing the ride and we joined up and went together for a bit of company. All in it probably cost less than £300 including ferry/ eurostar and accomodation and wasn't that hard to organise. We stayed in Kyriad hotels (sort of Travelodge quality, maybe a bit sparser!) in Calais and Amiens and then a cheap hotel in Paris.
If you're organised and get in touch with P&O and
Eurostar they might give you free transport (P&O did it for me on the agreement I would donate the cost to the charity).
The ride was brilliant, hardwork as I'm not a very experienced rider but well worth it and I raised over the minimum required by organised trips but the charity got the lot.
Sorry, i'm no good at adding links etc. if you want i could try and get some details of route etc on here but no guarantees!

Gareth

Edit. Do a search for "anyone fancy london to paris" That was the thread that started it all!

Velonutter

PM'd you.

Jamie@AC

Hi Dave,

I work for a company that organises these sorts of events. On a personal note I understand that it seems painful when £x amount of your fundraising is paid to third party organisers, I certainly would be asking the same questions that many people do when they sign up to these sorts of events; exactly how much goes to the charity?

What I will say is that if this money wasn't paid to an event organiser then it means the charity is doing all of the 'logistics' in-house which probably means even less of the fundraising actually supports the cause. I know that it seems like all of these events can be done quite cheaply when you initially look into it, but the costs mount up. Mainly in staffing to be honest. Therefore if you could get volunteers for your small group then yes, it could be cheaper to organise it yourself.

Whatever you decide then I wish you the best of luck and wish your sister well. It's never a nice thing to face, but being proactive as you are doing can make it so much easier!

All the best,

Jamie.

andrew@snowrace

have you got a just giving page yet?

Baybash

I took the exactly same view as you and organised my own L2P trip. I organised the whole trip in May 2009 and it cost £210 per person for accomodation and transport (Ferry and Eurostar). Check out our blog for my experience - earliest entries in 2009 at http://tourdeamateurs.blogspot.co.uk/