Fundraising a-z A – Z of Fundraising Ideas C a BAKE SALE ARTS AND CRAFTS No one has time to buy birthday cards these days! Hold a card-making craft workshop for your friends and sell your cards around the office at lunchtime, saving your colleagues hassle, raising money for City Gateway, and having fun at the same time. Why not bake your own cakes or sign up for one of our cake-making workshops? Participants pay a small fee for the workshop and come away with a new recipe and a delicious cake! Book one for a group of friends or colleagues by emailing us. d et tick et tick DONATE PRIZES Can you get free tickets to a show or exhibition, or a free round of golf from your local golf club? City Gateway support a number of events throughout the year which can always benefit from interesting and substantial prizes. CLOTHES SWAP/SWISH Swishing.com provides helpful tips for hosting your own clothes swap event, where people bring their unwanted clothes and leave with a whole new set for a small fee or £1 per item. A great way to completely revamp your wardrobe without the financial hangover! e EASTER EGG HUNT Organise one around your workplace (check with your facilities team first!) A – Z of Fundraising Ideas f g olate choc GIVE UP SOMETHING FANCY DRESS Get your whole office involved! Why not celebrate National Talk Like A Pirate Day on the 19th September, or one of these other national days. Can you set a Guinness World Record for the number of smurfs in an office? Get a donation jar, get sponsored, or donate money you would have used on bad habits. For instance, get your whole office to give up management speak and try and hold a meeting without it, making people donate to the jar if they use any jargon. Get sponsored to give up speaking for a day (a 24 hour or 48 hour silence) if you’re a very chatty person, or get sponsored to shave your hair off. Alternatively, give up public transport/ cigarettes/chocolate for a week, and make healthier choices such as walking to work and abstaining from bad habits, whilst donating the money that you would have spent to City Gateway. i HOW MANY…? Every Friday you could hold classic guessing games, such as ‘how many sweets are in the jar?’, or ‘how many raisins are in the cake?’ where the winner gets sweet/cake if they guess correctly. j JAIL AND BAIL INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGES Go to Skyline Overseas Challenges and check out what events you can enter for City Gateway. The most popular is the London to Paris Cycle ride, which takes place several times a year. Skyline also offer treks across the Sahara Desert and Costa Rica, as well as Vietnam and South Africa cycles throughout the year. You have to raise a certain amount which covers the cost of everything, and includes a donation to City Gateway. Sponsor your colleagues to set off from a mystery location without a mobile phone or money. Challenge them to find their way back by getting members of the public to donate money along the way. A – Z of Fundraising Ideas L K k KARAOKE Why not hold an office karaoke competition? Showcase the best talent in your office by holding a talent competition and encouraging colleagues to pay a small fee. Gemserv have held an ‘X-factor’ style competition for us two years in a row, and it continues to be a huge success. Get the venue for free and charge a small entry fee. LENDING LIBRARY Put those well-read books to good use by setting up a library at work. Lend books out to friends for £2 a book and encourage ‘reading lunches.’ m MONOPOLY CHALLENGE A fun way of getting your office involved in a fundraising day. Get into small teams and race around the monopoly board, completing challenges along the way. We will provide you with ‘Monopoly Challenge’ packs, which will provide teams with the rules, Chance/Community Chest challenge cards and monopoly board. The team who earns the most points wins a prize awarded by City Gateway! Contact niamh.kilalea@citygateway.org.uk for your ‘Monopoly Challenge’ packs. n NON-STOP FUN Stay up all night, dance all day, or come up with something new (such as the 24 hour pedalo race that Moorhouse Consultancy organised for us!) o ONLINE Go online to eBay and opt to add a small donation to your payment at the checkout, sell online and donate 10-100% of the sale price to City Gateway, or auction off your unwanted items directly through City Gateway’s eBay shop. A – Z of Fundraising Ideas p Q? QUIZ NIGHT PAMPER DAY Ask your company to pay for a pamper package from our beauty social enterprise, Beauty Gateway. Our Beauty Apprentices will come to a quiet space in your office and provide the following treatments: back massages, head massages, manicures and pedicures. Past successes have included ‘Pamper the PA’ day, and a Bollywood makeover. Contact niamh.kilalea@citygateway.org.uk to arrange. Put together a fun quiz and involve your whole office. You can even have a ‘guess the baby photo’ round. T S SKYDIVE Go to Skyline Parachuting, choose City Gateway and book! All you have to do is put down a deposit of £70, which you can make back if you raise £375. ‘TOUGH GUY’ The ultimate test of endurance in this extreme race. Read more about it here and let us know whether you would like to enter for us by emailing niamh.kilalea@citygateway.org.uk R RECYCLE Trade in your old mobile phones, ink cartridges or old printers to raise funds for City Gateway. Go to SHP and choose City Gateway as the beneficiary charity, or email simon.gregory@shpforcharity.co.uk directly to organise collection for large items/quantities, and quote City Gateway. u UNWANTED ITEMS Sell your bric-a-brac in one of London’s many car boot sales. Check where your nearest car boot sale is here. A – Z of Fundraising Ideas V W VERY CLOSE SHAVE Ask your bearded workmates to have their beard or head shaved for charity. Just think, it would save lots of money on styling products! x WISDOM FROM EXPERT SPEAKERS Invite an expert in your field to come and give an interesting talk at your workplace during a lunchtime or evening. Charge an entrance fee and donate it to City Gateway. y ZUMBA X-CHANGE Get your friends to donate their time and specialist skills (for instance, teaching guitar or language expertise) to be auctioned off. To make it easier for colleagues to get involved, hold a silent auction in the office where people write down or email their bids over the course of the day. z YOUR OWN IDEA Do something completely different, like Moorhouse Consulting’s Extreme Pedalo challenge, Ablestoke’s Golf Day, or Germserv’s RPI X-factor. Anything is possible! (or any other kind of dance!) Link up with a ballroom dancing society and nominate big personalities in your office to learn a strictly ballroom routine. Hold a fundraising event where colleagues, friends and families can vote for who they want to win. Let’s talk about it Why not talk about your fundraising activities on Facebook or Twitter? You could also get in touch with the local media two weeks before your event is due to take place, and invite them to send a photographer to cover your event. We’d love to hear how you’ve raised money, and we are always on hand for advice and ideas. You can reach us on 0203 189 0405 or drop us a line at fundraising@citygateway.org.uk Who knows? Your idea could be included in the next A-Z of Fundraising! Good luck and have fun!
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