Fundraising update

Three months ago when we first heard that we had been accepted into the Evening Standard Polar Challenge Team with a target of raising £9,000 for Maggies a number of thoughts entered our heads….

Firstly — what a great charity to raise money for….Cancer effects so many people
Secondly — how on earth are we going to raise that amount in four months
Thirdly — CRIKEY - we do we start.

We had to get cracking with the meetings straight away to discuss ideas, competitions or Raffles?, parties or events? A difficult decision, especially as time was not really our friend. We worked out that with the Xmas holidays and our own personal time away, we had approximately 3 months to raise as much as we could.

Loads of ideas were suggested and we decided to go with a few big rather than loads of little ones. Tim (the tall hairy one) came up with an absolutely fantastic idea to start us off with a Sports Quiz. Predicting results of events coming up from Jan — May 2005 — what a great idea. Out came the powerpoint skills in order to design a competition form that everyone could fill in….Brilliant. So many people loved the quiz and from the Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, Metro and Evening Standard a staggering £1,400 was raised.

From there we had a somewhat lull with Xmas and everyone having seriously overspent. There was also the tragic Tsunami disaster which deeply effected so many people (myself included) which took precedent over our own fundraising. We therefore waiting until our trip from Austria was complete before we once again emailed/mailshot and phoned all of our family,friends, clients and basically anyone we had ever met in our lives to ask for their help and donations.

Very quickly we suddenly started to see an increase on a daily if not hourly basis….One minute we had £2,500 then we had £3,000 and it just kept going up and up and up. Everyone seemed to have suddenly heard about what we were doing and there was a crazy frenzied attack on the www.justgiving.com/polarchallenge website. Unbelievable as I write this piece, I am amazed at the support we have received and only just one hour ago we stormed our £7,000 figure. Only £9,000 to go to hit target although — hey lets not stop there. It’s a great cause so we plan to keep going and raise as much as we can before we go on April 12th.

A big Thank you has to go to two separate sets of people who have held events on our behalf. These include Pat Taylor, Gary McGregor and Phillippa Wilkes who held a Tombola and Boot Sale which raised a staggering £1,200 for us and also to Frazer Whitby and Wayne Mensar who organised a Quiz night and raffle which raised nearly £400. — Thanks Chaps, your help is greatly appreciated.

And so the fundraising continues - £2,000 to go and still a dress down day and a raffle to do. The raffle may I say is going to be a real cracker and thanks to everyone who have donated prizes for this. The tickets will be going on sale in the next few weeks and the draw is planned at the end of May when we return. There’s a digital camera to win, and X-box, red letter days, CD players — oh the list goes on.

So thank you to everyone who has shown their support with their sponsorship and donations so far. It’s a fabulous charity to be raising money for and we are looking forward to (hopefully) storming our £9,000 target.