I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again – you lot are awesome. At our Trustees Meeting on Wednesday, collective jaws dropped when I told them we’d raised nearly £17,000 from Just Giving sporting challenges, including Julien’s mammoth bike trip, our parachute jump and the recent nail-biting abseil.
Now, I haven’t exactly mastered the art of ‘asking’ people to give money but one man who seems to know what he’s doing in this field is Supporter Kenny Monaghan: he’s raised almost £800 for his sponsored bike ride – and he isn’t even going until October! His target is £1,549.95 and I won’t be surprised if he smashes it. A few other Supporters have signed up, including Simon Crewdson, Anna Fiske and organiser Perle, so if you want to join them, email perle@childsifoundation.org for more details.
In the meantime, Kenny has kindly shared with us the secrets of his success…
Kenny’s Tips and Tricks on how to get sponsorship based on my not very considerable experience:
1. Be BOLD, cheeky even, and use every opportunity to ask for money – nearly everybody can afford £5. I find humour is a good way to proceed: “How much did that silly hat cost ya? Should have given me the money!”
2. Ask everybody you know and plenty of people who you don’t. I mailed my entire email contacts list, all work contacts permitted, and all facebook contacts. And don’t stop there – ask all these people to forward your request to everyone they know, you never know, I was surprised at some of the people who then donated
3. Explain how brilliant the charity is – a picture says a thousand words
4. Get your colleagues to sponsor you, others will have to follow suit. My first donation from a colleague was £30, and soon others followed suit, with the managers giving more – you can use office politics to your advantage here! And pick on people on payday – I nudged the guy who sits beside me for £15, how could he refuse? I also plan to resend my initial email with thanks and a message to say ‘There’s still time to sponsor me!’ on Sept pay day. It also helps to ask people after you’ve just helped em out work wise
5. All family members must donate – it’s the law!!
6. Everyone you have ever sponsored must sponsor you – it’s the law
7. Anyone, you’ve ever done a favour for must sponsor you – it’s the law
8. All housemates must sponsor you – it’s the law
9. People who casually say at some point, “I’ll sponsor you” must sponsor you – it’s the… oh, you get the idea by now!
10. I got my Mum collecting for me in Ireland, she likes that sort of thing –all of her visitors get asked for sponsorship, the tea ain’t free!
11. Use every opportunity to remind people: If you’re having a google/facebook chat with me and haven’t sponsored me yet, I’ll be reminding you. In fact, if your status is green on chat, I’ll be reminding you…
12. My mate just asked me out for a beer this evening, he paid £13 sponsorship for the pleasure
13. One of my old house mates owes me £6 for a bill, hasn’t paid despite 3 reminders, I’ve asked her to donate it through Just Giving now
14. That’s all I can think of, you have to think that raising the money is part of the challenge, that’s what makes it worthwhile
Priceless.
