Fundraising progress

Hi all,

I thought I'd pass on a little info we found out from our first fundraising effort over the weekend just gone. Given we were late signing up for the Rally we though we better get our skates on and think about contacting local and national companies for support. After 65 letters and numerous phone calls we have a few things planned for the future. Our local Greyhound racing track has offered us 100 free tickets for us to sell on at £5 each (all proceeds will go to H4H), they get 100 punters though the door to spend money on bets (which I'm terrible at) and food and drink (which I'm not bad at) so everyone is a winner, hopefully!

Our most successful venture came out of the blue. I was on the phone to my local ASDA store speaking with the community events co-ordinator asking for dates to come and collect in the future, when she offered me a very short notice collection the morning after! With less than a day to prepare we went along to ASDA armed with banners, flags, wristbands, tins, buckets and large smile for the public hoping for the best. From the second we had the banner up we were mobbed with all ages coming to give whatever they had. Children gave up thier sweetie money, women emptied change from their purses in front of our eyes and notes were appearing regularly from wallets. We were also lucky enough to be between 2 of those coinstar machines, which do get annoying after 4 or 5 hours but many people put handfuls of coins which wont sort into your bucket!

Our 12 hours of collecting on the saturday and sunday raised an amazing £2173 for H4H and I was back down at ASDA on the Monday at 10am with a thank you letter and asking for further dates. Trust me in the fact that they love H4H as it's a popular charity and the stores love to have collectors who they know will make money. As I found out, it is good PR for them and they want you to do well as much as we do. Needless to say, we will be back in ASDA in Jun, the weekend before the Rally.

I can't urge everyone enough, if you haven't spoken to your local supermarket about bag packs or collections then you are missing a trick. I have seen the success for myself and it far outweighed our expectations on the popularity of the cause. Given this success, we have now raised our fundraising target from £3000 to £5000. Fingers crossed.

I hope everyone else manages a collection like ours and has thier faith restored in human kind in the very near future, we certainly did.

All the best and happy fundraising.

My word you Atha gang that is a tremendous result; and you've raised the bar - brilliant.

You will have seen I've copied your post to all the 2011 rally entrants; the post speaks for itself and should be an inspiration to others.

If all the teams use a similar approach the 2010 record will be smashed.

Well done & mega thanks

Superb, a fantastic effort, something we can all learn from.

Well done Folks.

Just goes to show the money is still out there for our boys and girls if you just keep plugging at it.

Well done Team Airborne!

We're waiting with baite breath for our first can rattling event... hope we do as well as you guys!

Skibum