Care4Calais desperately needs funds to continue our work on a daily basis and to feed, clothe and provide basic essentials to the refugees. As we are funded 100% by normal people who believe in the work we do, charity fundraisers are an excellent way to help – and you can have a lot of fun along the way!
It’s simple to get involved and to help; no special skills or amazing fundraising abilities are required. One of the easiest things you can do is to find an event that is already running – a dinner, a show, a fair – and ask if you can do a collection or talk or a raffle for Care4Calais at the event. This means you don’t have to actually organise anything yourself!
But if you are more ambitious you may want to do a sponsored run, a cake bake, a coffee morning or a work event that you do run yourself.
Try reading these case studies to get inspired:
Whatever you do please do get in touch and let us know, and feel free to ask if you have any questions or if we can help. And please, please make sure you use Care4Calais’ details on our fundraising platform. There are no charges and it means you can claim gift aid, increasing every pound donated by 25%! Just set up your fundraiser and select Care4Calais as your charity. The rest is automatic:
How to set up a charity fundraiser
- Decide on your activity, when it will be held and what you want the end result to be: for instance, is it designed to raise money or to collect much needed items? Be clear what you want to achieve from the outset.
- Be sure that you understand the purpose of Care4Calais: be ready to explain why it is important to support the work with and for refugees in France and Belgium. “Refugees are struggling to survive in appalling and squalid conditions with little access to the most basic needs”…..”No human beings should be left to live like this”….”Our resources are stretched to the limit and we urgently need your help to enable us to continue to distribute basics like water and food”.
- Try and get donors to see that there are personal benefits to becoming involved in fundraisers: social events such as quiz nights, coffee mornings, karaoke nights, etc. provide opportunities to meet new people and see old friends.
- Think about who you are trying to reach to support your event and then decide how best to advertise it: is emailing more suitable for getting the message out about the event, or Facebook, texting, WhatsApp, or posters and leaflets? Or even an old fashioned phone call?
- Include others in supporting event planning: ask family, friends, colleagues, to give you ideas and suggestions: enlist them to support with putting the plan into action and distribute tasks so that you get the greatest involvement and a likely increase in potential donors from their contacts.
- Build reminders into your planning: keep people updated with progress on the planned event and remind them that their support is important to the success of the work of Care4Calais and the plight of refugees.
- Ensure that all information is accurate: date, time, venue and programme/itinerary all need confirming and could be duplicated in the reminder.
- Once the event has finished, make sure those who participated are thanked for their support and involvement: give people information on the funds raised, or the number of warm winter coats collected, etc. Emphasise what a difference this will make to those refugees trying to survive in France and Belgium, as well as to the front line work of Care4Calais.
- Showcase the event: take pictures and videos, ask permission to share them, provide details of the success of the event and pass this to Care4Calais to enable us to show the support that is out there. Also, share it with your friends on social media so that others are made aware of these fundraisers and might be motivated to plan their own.
Here are some more ideas:
Organise a comedy night
We have groups who organise Stand Up Comedy nights to raise funds – you can charge for tickets, sell your own drinks if you have the right licences or sometimes venues will agree to donate a % of their bar intake. We can send you leaflets to hand out so everyone knows why they are there, and you can have a fun evening of laughter, knowing you are helping vulnerable refugees.
Create a t-shirt design
Why not create a specific design of t-shirt, tea towel, mug or other merchandise and sell it to raise funds for Care4Calais? We’ve had some great examples in the past – you can find your own supplier or use a platform like Teefunder who give you a % of the sales price and manage the production and delivery for you. You can even turn it into a competition between a few of you – see who has the Dragons Den spirit!
Sponsored challenges
Whether you want to challenge yourself to a 10k, half or full marathon, a long bike ride, to stay silent for a particular period of time or give up luxuries for a month – anything goes with sponsored events (as long as it is safe and legal!) so think what would be a real push for you. Create a page on our fundraising platform here (they don’t charge fees and we get an extra 25% of each donation thanks to gift aid where eligible), tell everyone your story, what you are doing and why you think supporting Care4Calais is so important, then just send round the link and post it on your social media. Make sure to let us know so we can sing your praises and inspire other people to do their own challenge as well!
Be as inventive as you like!
We’ve heard of funds being raised by selling copies of a band’s CD, holding an auction of favours (cooking dinner for a group or washing someone’s car etc), having an afternoon tea trolley around the office with home baked treats, a Friday beer and wine club where people donate the drinks and then others pay to have that well deserved glass – the possibilities are endless.
Do let us know what you are up to and we’d love to help publicise it as well – click here to get in touch, we can’t wait to hear what your belief in helping refugees will push you to do!
