At Localgiving we like to highlight the amazing work fundraisers do for our charities and community groups. Every month I (Byron, Localgiving’s Membership Coordinator and helpline guy) pick out some some of the very best in fundraising events. Here are some of the most inspiring causes and fundraising appeals we have seen this month The 2020 TransAm Bike Race Many people say that everything is bigger in America: the cars, the food the buildings - and now apparently the bike rides. Mike is riding 4,300 miles across America. The Bradley Wiggins of Nottingham is taking on this fantastic feat in aid of Harmless. Mike is  aiming to raise a total of £5000 in aid of the charity Harmless. Harmless is an organisation that combines personal and professional experience to support people who self harm, their friends and families, and professionals. Harmless believe in recovery, and through their work they want to promote health and well being. So many people who self harm feel overwhelmed by their emotions, and this is something they want to work hard to change.Harmless was set up by people who understand self harm and at the heart of our service is a real sense of hope. All the very best from all of us here at Localgiving.   The Retirement fight This is Martin’s last fight before he hangs up his gloves. Martin is a keen boxer and says that it will be thrilling to do what he enjoys best and get to raise money for a worthwhile cause at the same time. Martin is aim to the raise £500 for the Riff Raff Society.The Riff Raff Society is an association of like minded well-doers. Riff Raff’s aim is to accept funding applications in the Greater Manchester area from people who are facing challenging situations in relation to ill health/disability or any other relevant misfortune.The Society aims to provide assistance by funding requests for life enhancing equipment, respite breaks, home improvements, or other beneficial services to those that we support.             3 Marathons in 3 Months for Cancer April is not running just one marathon but three! This fantastic feat of endurance is in aid a local cancer charity that was set up in memory of her friend Faye-Knowles Chapman. April is not only hoping to hit her target of £1000 but to raise awareness around cancer. The Faye Knowles Chapman Foundation was set up in March 2013, Faye Knowles-Chapman sadly lost her battle against Cervical Cancer at the young age of 27.  In memory of Faye they are trying to raise awareness amongst young women and people in general. They are campaigning to get the minimum age for screening reduced or even removed altogether.        

One of the Crowdfund Wales Programme’s newest members, Cardiff and Vale Scouts, has used a blended approach to their fundraising to raise much needed cash. Area Commissioner Julian Jordan approached Localgiving as he was keen to start to raise money online but realised that for the first appeal, the sum would be high as it was focussed on a refurbishment of the toilets on the Jubilee Camp Site. The grand total that the group is hoping to raise is £20,000 which they thought would be difficult through online fundraising alone. What was important from the outset however was that all the money raised was in one place and that the ask was specific and set across a limited period of time not only to create a sense of urgency but also so that the fundraiser did not become too onerous a task to monitor and manage. By using a blended approach and adding off-line donations, it is easy to monitor the progress of a campaign and to make it completely transparent for the public. The text on appeals can be changed throughout so you can update on the appeal page how close you are to your target and change images if you wish. The toilets on the Jubilee campsite are not adequate for today’s hygiene standards and with the introduction of additional Covid-19 safety measures; they would not have been fit for purpose for the number of scouts that will use the site. Julian and his colleagues decided to create a short video make this appeal eye-catching and to demonstrate the need. Recognising the importance of starting an appeal with cash in the pot, Julian quickly decided that this was going to have to be a mixture of on and off-line donations. The Scouts had already received a grant which would go some way towards the refurbishment, so they were able to launch the appeal with a £10,000 donated offline. Psychologically, when potential donors click on the link to an appeal, they are far more likely to give to a cause where they can see other donations have been made. Also, £10,000 does not seem so daunting for anyone who sees a high total wonders what impact their small donation would have. Julian also applied for a Magic Little Grant from Localgiving for CCTV for the site which he was successful in obtaining. On the Crowdfund Wales Programme, once a group has reached £1750, they can unlock their match funding grant of £250 and the Scouts were able to do this quickly due to dedicated time set aside at the start of the appeal for promotion. In fact, Julian not only did Julian post his progress on social media frequently but he also sent the link via a newsletter and ensured there was coverage in the local press – this all helped to give the appeal the boost it needed. The Scouts are making excellent progress and only need to raise a further £2,283 in the next 44 days to reach their £20,000 target. To read more about appeal and to donate, click here.  

Senior managers and trustees of charities and social enterprises face a myriad of challenges. Managing a business is difficult enough. Running a social enterprise or a charity, which obliges you to search for innovative funding opportunities, deal with budgetary pressures caused by Government policies, put together engaging fundraising campaigns (often on shoe-string budgets), help clients who are suffering from complex issues and a complete a cornucopia of other tasks; can put enormous strain on your personal life, relationships, and mental well-being. Here are a few tips on how to reduce this strain and make your team happier and more productive. Train Your Team To Prepare For All Eventualities No organisation wants a stressed member of their team to slip and break their leg while contributing to an outreach programme. Your team could lose that colleague for months while they recover. In the same way, these organisations should ensure that the emotional challenges experienced by their workers and volunteers every day, by cases involving complex issues like drug addiction and violence, do not leave them feeling forced to withdraw from their roles due to mental ill-health because of these experiences. By training your senior management to give staff the tools to manage stress effectively and recover emotionally from traumatic experiences, you can reduce the risk of losing valuable staff for long periods due to sick leave caused by mental ill-health. Turn Your Work Team Into A Sports Team Exercise provides a fantastic opportunity to reduce stress. The positive endorphins released by the brain whenever you engage in physical activity will help you to put everything into perspective and approach the issue at hand from a different perspective. It’s difficult to stress about Monday’s emails while you’re trying not to get hit in the face by a squash ball. Plus, sports can foster a fantastic team spirit among your staff. What’s not to love? Eat And Sleep Well Being tired and hungry is hardly going to make you feel less stressed. Healthy diets and sleep patterns are essential for your colleagues’ mental well-being. Write Down How You Feel Sometimes you just need to let everything out. Particularly if you have had to deal with eight gruelling hours of difficult situations. Your notepad provides a brilliant outlet for these feelings. Writing can also let you detail the brighter aspects of your role. Writing and reading out funny stories about your job will help everyone to feel less stressed.   How We Can Help At Altruist Enterprises, we can sit down with you and create strategies to help your team manage the stresses involved in their day-to-day responsibilities, so that minor issues do not develop into emotionally draining crises. We have helped organisations across the country to increase their staff’s mental well-being and consequently, their motivation to boost that organisation’s growth. For more information on how we can help your team to eliminate stress, please click here.   Katie Buckingham is the Founder and Director of Altruist Enterprises; a passionate and caring provider of Resilience, Stress Management and Mental Health at Work training to organisations nationally. Find out more here www.altruistuk.com   

The best charity campaigns are often based on beneficiary narratives. The personal stories of those who have been affected by the issues we address or who have benefitted from our support can be moving, inspirational and add a sense of real urgency to a campaign. However, while these stories are elixir for us charity fundraisers and marketers, we must remember that they are loaned not owned. In many cases our beneficiaries are highly vulnerable people, be it asylum seekers awaiting a decision or young people who have recently escaped gang life. Ensuring the protection and wellbeing of those people who have lent us their stories should always be our priority. In this blog we look at some of the actions we can take to ensure that our beneficiaries and their stories are treated with the sensitivity and respect they deserve. People before stories: Always begin by considering the level of need and life situation of the people whose stories we are telling. However proud we are of what we have achieved, or however perfectly their story fits our campaign goals, if the individual is in a vulnerable situation, or a focus on their past could have any negative impact, we may want to reconsider using their story. Get (Informed) consent: People can only really be deemed to have consented if they fully understand what they are consenting to. We should ensure the people we are working with know how and where their stories and images will be used and that they are aware of any potential repercussions. Use their own words: Being given the opportunity to tell your story can be hugely empowering. However, by equal measure, losing control of one’s story can be damaging.We should try to give our beneficiaries the platforms and opportunity to tell their own story, in their own words.   Protect identities: We must think carefully about what measures should be taken to protect the identities of beneficiaries. Depending on the circumstances and vulnerability of the person we are working with, we may look at changing their names and voices or using actors or illustrative images. Stay positive: The same story can often be told in different ways. Charity campaigns too often paint their beneficiaries as passive victims who were in need of ‘saving’. While the whole point of most campaigns is to show our impact – this should not be done in a way that dismisses the agency of our beneficiaries. Remain media aware: If our beneficiaries are open to talking to the press is vital that we fully prepare them for interviews and that we accompany them if required. Moreover, we need to try to ensure that we only work with sympathetic, trusted journalists and media outlets. Whatever measures we put in place, there is always the potential to lose control of a story and we must be ready to react and provide all necessary support to our beneficiaries in these circumstances. While working with beneficiaries’ stories, of course, comes with challenges – this should not prevent us using them. Not only are real-life stories more engaging and persuasive than anything we could produce from our desks but, I would argue, the ‘nothing about us without us’ principle obliges us to put their stories at the centre of our work whenever we can. It is simply a matter of making this our mantra: people must always come before stories. For more marketing and fundraising tips and guides, why not visit our Resources Page.   

At Localgiving we like to highlight the inspirational challenges individual fundraisers carry out for our amazing charities and community groups. Every month I (Byron,Localgiving’s Membership Coordinator and helpline guy) will be picking out some of the very best active fundraisers on the platform. Here are some of the most inspiring causes and fundraising appeals we have seen this month: The Liberal Jewish Synagogue - 10,000 Steps commemorate Kindertransport Esta Charkham and Susannah Alexander walked a whopping 10,000 steps on the 2nd of Dec, more than deserving of a sequel Proclaimers song named after them. They achieved this feat to commemorates and celebrate the refugees who were welcomed into the UK in 1938. They have raised a massive £2,585 for  The Liberal Jewish Synagogue. Everyday throughout the year, the synagogue welcomes members and the broader community to a wide range of social, outreach, community care and educational services, activities and programmes for people of all ages. Somerset and Avon Rape and Sexual Abuse Support (SARSAS) - Little Vic Big Trek - Everest Base Camp for SARSAS This Christmas I've climbed a mountain novelty toblerone; Vic is climbing Everest! Vic’s challenge starts with 15 days in Nepal where she will have to acclimaise to the altitude. Best of luck from all of the Localgiving team! SARSAS provide free, confidential, trauma informed specialist support and counselling services to relieve the distress and rebuild the lives of survivors of rape and any kind of sexual abuse who are aged 13 and over. They specialise in working with women and girls. SARSAS raises awareness about rape and sexual abuse through informative campaigning, advocating for survivors voices to be heard and training for change.   Young People First- Skydive Challenge 2018 A big well done to every one of the 40 skydivers raising money for Young People First. Between them they have raised a sky-high £4,000! Young People First provides support to some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged young people living in Warwickshire and Coventry. The vision is to inspire young people to reach their fullest potential and support them in overcoming the personal barriers preventing them from achieving. The charity is committed to providing a long-term, holistic service which is centred on building positive relationships of trust with each young person.    

#Square Meals Square Food Foundation is a cookery school and community kitchen in Bristol that supports adults and children across the city to access, cook, and eat good food. In their eyes, cooking is a vehicle for personal development which helps build resilience - it addresses challenges people face which stem from poverty, disability, or other circumstances beyond their control. The Foundation operates both as a Community Interest Company and as a Charity – offering paid cooking masterclasses and corporate workshops to subsidise their work with schools and community groups. They also apply to various trusts and foundations to secure grant funding for both core costs and specific projects. Before the impacts of COVID-19 began to be felt, Square Food Foundation was already working with children and families from local school Oasis Academy Connaught, where the majority of children are eligible for free school meals. The programme of weekly family workshops, teacher training, whole class cooking sessions, and an after-school cooking club aimed to improve health, provide skills, and build community resilience from the bottom up.  Not only did lockdown mean that all of Square Food’s services were suspended indefinitely, but associated school closures left stranded those families that usually rely on free school meals to feed their children.  Faced with an increased demand for access to healthy food, the Foundation’s management team sat down and worked out how they could adapt their services to serve their community.  Taking on furloughed chefs as volunteers, they stocked their kitchen with two rotating teams of professionals, capable of producing over 270 meals a day, distributed in partnership with Oasis Academy Connaught, to 54 local families. They also devised a system of DIY meal kits and online cook-along videos to provide families with an extra meal and a fun activity to bring them together at the weekend, engaging groups who may otherwise have been reluctant to ask for help. How to plan an appeal Claire Allen, Square Food’s fundraising and communications manager, began by setting up The #SquareMeals Appeal on Localgiving, and documented the work of their staff and volunteers on social media and in their email newsletter. “Until recently, our online fundraising presence has been minimal - we’ve used Localgiving more as a payment platform than as a fundraising tool. To maximise support for our #SquareMeals appeal, we knew we had to spread the word as widely as possible - setting up a page on Localgiving that was separate from our broader organisation page, and that we could add images to has helped position the appeal as its own project - and encouraged people to support.” At the beginning of this process, Claire got in touch with the Localgiving Help Desk team to find out whether she could leverage the contact details which past donors on the platform had consented to share with them. The Help Desk team walked her through the process of configuring and downloading a marketing report from within the Foundation’s account which she then used to expand the reach of her newsletter. “Having easy access to real people has been so valuable. Our workload is busier than ever right now and the super-quick turnaround, personal response and considered advice from Localgiving’s Help Desk team has made a real difference.” Their message was simple – for as long as they could, the Square Food team would be working flat-out to help their community access the food they needed – and they made it as easy as possible for potential donors to support them in their work by directing them to their Localgiving page. They received widespread local news coverage after sending out press releases to journalists and were featured in the Bristol Evening Post, Bristol 24/7, and on BBC News. Donors on Localgiving are directly encouraged to share the details of the causes they support with their own networks via a social media ‘Share’ button built into the donation process, further increasing the online reach of any organisation on the platform. Results Since launching their appeal on March 20th, Square Food Foundation has raised over £21,770 on Localgiving from over 590 donors, supplemented by £3475 worth of Gift Aid. That figure represents a 15x increase on total donations received in 2019, when their organisation raised just over £1600 on Localgiving. Square Food raises in the region of £4000 offline from their paid masterclasses and workshops on a yearly basis – a revenue stream which has been put on hold for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis. Thanks to their appeal's success, they have attracted new supporters by direct debit who will be contributing over £150 each month on an ongoing basis. Further to that, they received support from their local network – The Better Food Company raised close to £1200 on the Foundation’s behalf and provided an additional £1000 of match funding. “Localgiving has made it as easy as possible for people to support our #SquareMeals mission - and this is borne out by the incredible number of donations we’ve received from our supporters.”   All of this culminated in the high point of their campaign – a single supporter approached Square Food Foundation after having heard about their work from a friend who had donated to their online appeal. They offered to match the money raised during their campaign up to a maximum of £10,000 to help expand the Foundation’s services more widely across Bristol. “The offer of match-funding came out of nowhere and really blew us away. It’s the first time we’ve received this level of support and it felt like an important milestone for Square Food Foundation.”  What’s next for Square Food Foundation? Whilst the future of many organisations is uncertain, they intend to maintain their current rate of meal production to help families in need through to September, by which time resumption of free school meals is expected. They want to build new partnerships with schools in Bristol, modelled on their ongoing relationship with Oasis Academy Connaught – these organisations form a vital link with the communities the Foundation aims to help. What advice would the team at Square Food Foundation offer to other organisations hoping to raise funds online? “We kept our message simple, made our work easy to understand, and kept our audience updated with regular, engaging communications. We knew they were rooting for us and we wanted to say thank you by providing them with pictures, videos and daily updates so they could see for themselves the impact of their support.”  There you have it – a recipe for success.   You can find out more about Square Food's work here or donate to the #SquareMeals Appeal on Localgiving.