Hello!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend! I was full of a cold which wasn’t nice but luckily it was only really a two day thing. I been doing a lot of thinking lately, which is probably too philosophical for this post, and I’m finally starting to feel a bit more motivated and I’m ready to power on! Fingers crossed I will be working and earning money this week (although I’m still waiting to hear about my hours) and I have a lot of blog posts planned for the next couple of weeks, including working on my travel video about Dominican Republic. I am still trying to organise my 6 days back packing around Tanzania (which is looking more like 6 nights and 7 days – yey more time!) but we’re all slowly getting there and I think we’ve got a good plan and hopefully I will be able to afford it by then! Which kind of brings me to the whole factor of going to Tanzania. My next big adventure to Tanzania is to climb Kilimanjaro for Childreach International and the only way I was to ensure my place on the trip was to raise £3060. I signed up around the end of October and since then I have been doing all that I can to raise the money I needed. That overall amount does cover flights and everything included in the Kilimanjaro trek (food and accommodation, which is camping) and then the rest goes straight to the charity to help fund their amazing projects, such as the school farming project I’m going to visit in Tanzania! Approximately two thirds of the money goes to charity, possibly even more!

I have had just over 7 months to raise the money whilst juggling my very hands-on course at uni! Not only that but I continued with my blog and have some how managed to maintain a bit of a social life and kept my fitness up by playing hockey! So first things first, it is do able!

YOU CAN DO IT!

It may not seem like a long time but you can definitely do it, but you do have to work hard! Stay motivated. Keep on watching those travel videos of people climbing the mountain or keep on learning more about the amazing causes you are raising money for! It all helps and if you have a well developed fundraising plan right from the beginning, that you can keep on adding to, you will smash your targets in no time!

Here’s how I did it:

Firstly, make yourself a fundraising plan on a spreadsheet. There should be a column for ideas, another column with space to list what you need to do for those ideas to come to life, and then a target amount to raise. This should be enough to give you a little motivation whilst also being a good place where you can work out how much you can raise overall.

Secondly, make yourself that list of ideas. To help you out, I have decided to go through everything that I did which helped me raise the money and hopefully you can get some ideas from that, feel free to ask me for more information if you fancy trying something out!

FUNDRAISING IDEAS:

Stalls – There’s lots you can sell at a stall. When we first started, we did a big team sweets and cakes stall as it was a great way to get to know everyone on my Kilimanjaro team. Since there was so many of us, we only made about £15 each but it’s a small step in the right direction. Doing seasonal stalls is also very good as at Christmas, my mum and I made lots of decorations and little gifts and sold them at my university’s Christmas fair! Anything you don’t sell, post pictures on Facebook and sell them to your friends! I’d say, on average, at each stall, if you do them alone or with two people, you can make at least £50 per day!

Seasonal Party – The first season that came around after I applied was Halloween so it only seemed right that our house hosted a Halloween party. I’ll admit, I don’t think we quite did all that we could to raise funds on this night but again it’s a step. We only made about £30 but you can definitely do more. Make some fancy themed snacks and drinks and put up a price list. If you have a breakfast bar, literally use it as a bar and make your guests pay. Obviously don’t stop them from bringing their own drinks but if you have some funky named cocktail, that you’ve probably found the recipe on Pinterest, then they are going to want to try one!

Raffles! – Childreach International do all they can to help out their fundraisers so at Christmas and Easter they send out tickets for a free prize draw for you to sell to make donations. Although I didn’t quite push it as much as I should have at Easter, I made an extra £100 at Christmas. You can set up your own raffle too. Simply ask for prize donations from local business and off you go!

Public Collections –  Firstly, go on eBay and buy a fancy dress costume. You’ll be amazed at what you can find! I bought a Supergirl costume for £13 and it was well worth it. I was lucky enough to have Childreach do it for me but if you don’t have that, speak to your local councils about getting a charity collection permit for a few days throughout the year. There is usually something online. Public collections are the easiest way to raise money as all you do is stand there with a collection bucket. Keep on smiling and have a laugh with everyone who puts in a little bit of spare change. I did at least 5 public collections and made over £500! The longer you can stand there, the more money you can raise. I made £110 one day! York was the best place for it as everyone was so lovely, I even got a hot chocolate bought for me without my asking!

Barefoot Day! – I have wrote about these on my blog because of how successful they were for not putting much effort in. I simply wore no shoes and socks for 24 hours and made it known across my social media. It can be very cold or wet but it’s a sacrifice to make £200. My first one wasn’t quite successful and only raised £30 but my dedication at doing it twice made people want to donate more and so made nearly £180! Easy to organise too as you pick a day and do it! Advertise it on Facebook beforehand and off you go!

Getting Slimed! – Choose somewhere quite public and get a few friends to help out with the pouring slime and collecting money and it’s all pretty easy. I chose to do it right outside my Student Union where it often gets quite busy, however I did have to fill out a risk assessment but I did it and people loved it. I was only there for about an hour and managed to raise at least £60, not bad for an hour! You can read more about it here!

Pub Quiz – My pub quiz could have gone a lot better. I had problems with the pub I did it at (they got a new manager less than a week before and she wasn’t told anything about my pub quiz and so it wasn’t advertised, and they didn’t get me the PA system they said they would) and in the end I only made £75. I’d suggest doing a pub quiz with another person so you can both bring all your friends and make more money. I only did £1 per person whereas you could bump that up to £2 at least as it’s for charity. The raffle is always a big money maker too so get some good prizes donated by local shops and get everyone to buy at least one strip!

Carboot Sale – Ah, a good old classic carboot sale! I sent letters out to all my neighbours asking if they had any unwanted items to put on a carboot. You wouldn’t believe the response I got. I had so much stuff to take, I loaded two cars and still had to do a second one. I made about £240 from both carboot sales. Whatever I had left, I have tried to sell on the local Facebook carboot groups. I’ve not had that much luck but I have sold a bin bag full of unwanted clothes for £20!

Bingo Night!– You can easily purchase bingo cards online and there are plenty of bingo caller apps for your phone so find a venue and invite everyone you know! Near my uni there are a few pubs that offer hire of their function rooms for free on certain nights so get in touch with places like that and see what you can do! Make it fancy dress, blast some music, bring some snacks, and have a great time! I made about £165 as everyone wanted a second round! The prizes don’t have to be much. Most of mine were unwanted tins and packets that I have in my kitchen cupboard, but I wrapped everything up to keep it a surprise.

Grand National Sweepstake – Every year in April we have the Grand National! Use it to your advantage. Invite all your friends and family around for a BBQ or go to your local pub. If you ask nicely, the pub owners will let you go round with your sweep stake! I did £2 a go and winner gets half! So I made £40!

Chores and Work – I managed to make an extra £10 from posting in my local Facebook group about what I was doing and offered to do some dog walking. A few people did actually get back to me but I didn’t push too hard. Also, any money I made from my blog over the past few months got donated straight on to my fundraising page. From doing my little bits of work I raised at least another £150!

Treadmill Walk! – As my final fundraising event, as well as a bit of training, I took on the challenge of doing a 12 hour treadmill hike at my local gym. It was horrible and I never want to do anything like it again. I was unable to walk for a good three days afterwards. The plan was to get as high up Kilimanjaro in Km as I could. In the 12 hours I managed 28km, only 12 off reaching the peak. On the following Tuesday I went back in and completed the final 12 km, raising over £160!

I had more ideas but unfortunately, with heading to Dominican Republic, I just didn’t have the time to fit them in! I did rely a lot on family and friends donating but obviously that never turns out the way you hope but all in all, eventually I managed to do it all thanks to the generosity of everyone who donated! When doing something like this, you’ll be surprised at how generous some people can be! Don’t get disheartened if you find yourself struggling though, everyone does but in the end it is worth it. Keep on working hard and organise as many events as you can!

Good luck if you are doing something similar!

– KC xx

Have you ever had to raise a large amount of money like this? Would you have any other ideas to add to the list?