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The fun in fundraising
Home » Blog » The fun in fundraisingGood guest bloggers and Oxfam Trailwalker 2012 team, The Ministry of Silly Walks returns to share their fundraising experiences so far. By team member Elizabeth Holland.
Current team fundraising total: $3,111.
Good guest bloggers and Oxfam Trailwalker 2012 team, The Ministry of Silly Walks returns this week to share fundraising tips and tricks. Catch their first blog here. Each fortnight the team will share their experiences as they prepare for their first Oxfam Trailwalker challenge to raise funds for Oxfam. The team is quietly confident they’ve got what it takes but there are sure to be life-lessons learned along the way!
Register your own team at www.oxfamtrailwalker.org.nz - deadline for new team registrations is January 31, 2012!
I’m very tempted to write a blog entry about a subject very close to my heart, and one that I’m very qualified to talk about: the acquisition, care and treatment of blisters. I have become something of an expert over the past two team training walks as I attempt to break in a new pair of shoes (currently, it appears the shoes are breaking me).
However, I'm not sure if people would like to read in gory detail just what my feet have been put through over the past few weeks. So I’m going to spare everyone and talk about fundraising instead. Although, I will say this much to anyone else in the same position: Dettol and plasters are your friend.
The team fundraising for me has largely involved spending hours in the kitchen with music blasting and a glass of wine on hand while baking cakes for a cake sale, and cakes for a book sale. Now there's a hint: attract more people to your sales by also selling delicious food.
I'm a big fan of selling food to raise money, or more specifically, I’m a big fan of fundraising by providing something. In terms of money-making, it's been moderately successful. Three members of the team held a bake sale at work and the money raised entered the hundreds. In terms of workplaces I'm the odd one out so, with the help of three wonderful co-workers who donated cakes, I managed to raise $60 from four cakes.
I also experimented with payment, choosing not to attach a price to the food, or even monitor payment. The cakes were set up in a common kitchen area with the price set at a slice for a gold coin donation, and trusted my colleagues to be honest and pay for what they took. The result was that the amount donated was more than the amount of slices on sale. Any one considering similar should know that you'll have to hold a lot of bake sales to reach your $2000 goal, but if you've got a big enough office, an honesty cake sale—in my experience—is quite modestly successful.
However, the big successful money raiser for us was the book fair. This took quite a bit of organisation and although the pay-off was lucrative, it’s rather high pressure. The first big concern was not having enough books to sell, swiftly replaced, once the books started piling up, with the concern we wouldn't have enough customers. Thankfully it all worked out in the end, with nearly two thousand dollars raised and the left over books taken in by the Salvation Army.
We took a break from fundraising over the Christmas period when everyone’s stressed and money is tight but the Ministry of Silly Walks has now raised over $3000. We’re hoping to raise over $5000 so our fundraising has yet to finish. Watch this space.
Lessons learned
- To best avoid fights over the oven, organise your baking in advance with your flatmate.
- Do consider fundraising fatigue. There’s only so many times you can hit up the same people for money. You need to diversify who you are targeting.
- There is, alas, no easy way to fundraise. Everything will involve either hard work or stress. Probably both. [Top fundraising ideas and success stories can be found on the Oxfam Trailwalker fundraising page].
- People love cake.
Now, I can't let an opportunity for fundraising go by so if you happen to want to donate to Oxfam, and would happily donate through the Ministry of Silly Walks team, please swing by our team page on the Oxfam Trailwalker website and donate!
The Ministry of Silly Walks team. L-R Ines Gessler, Elizabeth Holland, Lynne White, Paul Gilbert.
All photo credits: Ministry of Silly Walks
