A “Round The UK” Tour on a budget
Can any other 41 Clubs come up with an unusual way to raise money?
When one of Wokingham 41 Club’s members saw how well a local Hospice cared for people, he decided that he wanted to help them in return. So, when Mike Bailey became Club Chairman he chose the Thames Hospice as his charity for the year. But what a year to pick. The Covid pandemic was in full flow and how do you raise money when you can’t get out and about?
We kicked around a few ideas and eventually agreed on a sponsored walk. But with pandemic travel restrictions we could not walk anywhere notable. We were stuck with walking around our local neighbourhoods, and on our own. Not very inspiring for sponsors. We needed some magic dust!
Eventually we arrived at the idea of a virtual walk from Land’s End to John O’Groats with us walking in our neighbourhoods, plotting the collective miles on a route map from Land’s End to John O’Groats along with some photoshopped photos of us passing famous landmarks. It seemed like a plan that could just work.
We did all the normal publicity stuff, Just Giving Page, Facebook, promotional photos, a logo, a flyer and begging emails, etc. The only difference was that we weren’t actually walking the route as a group. We were careful to make that clear to everyone, but in a strange way the virtual nature of the event added to its appeal. It made it more interesting.
From the very beginning we thought that we had something significant on our hands. We had more members volunteering to take part than we’d expected and before we had even started walking, the donations were more than half our £1,000 target.
We kept the buzz going throughout the month with weekly emailed reports to sponsors, regular video conferences with the walkers, updates on the Just Giving site and on Facebook, and wacky photos of the team walking. Keeping the energy level up helped to motivate us and brought in a stream of donations by cheque and mostly via our Just Giving page.
Our 19 enthusiastic walkers did so many miles that we “reached” John O’Groats in the second week. So, we extended the walk and elected to walk back to Land’s End with a meandering route via Wales and East Anglia to use up the extra miles and arrive back at Land’s End on the last day of the month.
Collectively we walked 2,296 miles and our lovely sponsors donated over £6,000 to the Thames Hospice. An amazing result, and twice the amount we normally raise for charity.
Raising that amount of money in the middle of a pandemic is amazing - it just shows what can be done by adding a little twist to a traditional fundraiser.
Can any other Clubs come up with a novel way to raise money – let us know if you can and don’t forget, we can now finish our walk in the pub.
Wokingham 41 Club
