A Blog About Charity

Those of you that know me well will know that there is a charity slant to most of the things that I do. I have done zip slides, over 20 half-marathons as well as 2 full marathons…….to the point that my friends were getting incredibly fed up with my constant requests for donations!!

SHINE has a ‘charity of the month’ programme where we donate £50 per month to charities either chosen by ourselves or nominated by our friends and clients, our aim is to highlight lots of great causes to our database. It is my opinion that all businesses regardless of shape or size should have a ‘charity of the year’ or a process of donating a percentage of profit to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

As a regular speaker on the Institute of Fundraising circuit I meet so many charities all fighting for their donations, their media space and everyone is desperately trying to think of the next ‘crazy’ idea to follow #nomakeupselfie and #icebucketchallenge.

SOFII……which is the ‘Showcase of fundraising innovation and inspiration’ hold an annual event where fundraisers get 5 minutes to present to a room of their industry peers a charity idea that they wish they had thought of. This is an incredible event where you see some wonderful ideas and some amazing marketing accidents that have worked and gone viral…..

August has been a good month for the good feeling of giving. I am a board member for Cancer Support Scotland and at our ‘Piss up in a Brewery’ event to celebrate the launch of our new brand and website we held a charity collection as part of a prize draw (everyone needs to feel they could get something back). I was overwhelmed the following day to have had two exceptional donations that meant a room of just over 40 people collected over £1,500.00. I had expected around £10 per person giving us around a £500 target.

Our philosophy was that we were providing people with food, drink and entertainments and they repaid us handsomely with a remarkable figure rasied.