A few weeks back I sat next to Demelda Penkitty at the Woman of the Year Lunch. Demelda had been nominated for the selfless way she had answered a request on my blog to help Anne Fowler, a lady dying of cancer who ran the wonderful charity Home-A-Dog in Snowdonia.
With hardly any notice, Demelda moved into a caravan at the bottom of Anne's garden to take over the rehab and rehoming of the dogs rescued from death row as Anne's health deteriorated.
Sadly after Anne died, it proved impossible for Demelda to continue her work with the charity, despite every effort on her part.
Demelda could see that there was still a tremendous need to continue the good work that Anne had started and resolved to continue to help the dogs in that region.
One of the first stumbling blocks in registering a new charity is the fact you need to have £5,000 in the bank in reserve.
Over lunch Demelda posed the question, how can you encourage people to donate before you become a registered charity?
Can you share your best fundraising techniques with Demelda and anyone else interested in raising a small organisations profile and funds?
Any wonderful companies happy to donate to Demelda's new venture to help save the death row dogs of Wales do get in touch!
This is a wonderful venture that retrains and rehomes dogs that otherwise would be killed. Any nice commercial pet companies out there feeling generous?
Beverley Cuddy, Editor
PS We’ve just spoken to Demelda about Border Collies in Need and her fundraising issues and, with her team, she has put together a fundraising Christmas Quiz Booklet which is an A5 booklet filled with quizzes and puzzles. It costs £2 and if people buy it, fill it in and send it back to her, the person with the most correct answers will win £20 worth of high street vouchers. All proceeds go to Border Collies in Need. Last year a similar booklet raised £100 for Home-a-Dog, but they would like to raise a lot more this year. It is available to buy from local sellers, from http://www.bordercolliesinneed.co.uk, by emailing bordercolliesinneed@live.co.uk or from the Border Collies in Need Facebook group, and the closing date for entries is 29th January 2010.
D for Dog would be happy to donate £500, if that is any help at all?
ReplyDeleteWOW! I've just emailed Demelda with the good news. What a speedy response. Thank you so much Jenny. 10% of the target reached already. Superb!
ReplyDeleteIf Demelda has a paypal account and a blog and/or website she could use paypal to help generate donations.
ReplyDeleteMaybe other sites could host the paypal element for her? Not sure if that's of any help at all?...
What started as a social dog walking group for Greyhound owners a few years ago became so popular, and the donation bucket for needy greyhounds got so full, that they had no choice but to register as a charity.
ReplyDeleteI know that took a long time, but it might be something worth thinking about?
If going down the donations page route, Just Giving is a great site for raising money for charities http://www.justgiving.com/. It is safe and easy.
ReplyDeleteHi, I'm Della, and have loved and rescued dogs for the past twenty years. Here are my suggestions, which I hope may help.
ReplyDeleteI and four friends started a fund raising group for our local charity, Dorset Animal Workers Group (DAWG) in June. Since then, we have raised nearly £1000.00 for their work.
We've done various things - table top sales and car boot sales are easy and a great way to start. Friends are delighted to get rid of their unwanted clothes and bric-a-brac.
Our best fund raiser so far was a sponsored dog walk in July, which raised £581.00. All we did was print a sponsor form and get sponsors. There were six of us walking, plus a selection of our dogs, and our plan was to ask a lot of people for a little bit of money, a pound here and a pound there very quickly adds up.
It's the same with table top sales, we only make £30 or £40 a time but it adds up.
One of our group also asked for donations instead of presents for her 70th birthday, which was lovely of her.
Good luck with your fund raising. It can be done. There are an awful lot of dog lovers out there. Incidentally, I'm sure DAWG would put a link on their website for Home-A-Dog if you approached them, or I could ask them for you if you like? They regularly pick up dogs from Wales.
Thank you so much Jenny for your generous offer to donate £500! That's amazing.
ReplyDeleteAlso thanks to everyone for ideas, it's all really helpful infomation.
We do already have a website and paypal account on site. www.bordercolliesinneed.co.uk