Top ten fundraising tips

You’re raising funds for something that you feel passionate about:

Start early and always carry your sponsorship form and a pen with you. Remember to ask sponsors to Gift aid it.
Be brief – pitch to your friends. It’s your best hope of getting them to open up their wallets.
Explain to people how much each pound will help and how the money will be spent. Read our Annual Review.
Collecting sponsorship money can be harder than doing the event itself. Try getting people to pay you upfront: post-dated cheques are ideal and allow you to promise they won’t be cashed if disaster strikes and you can’t compete.
Delegate, delegate, delegate. Build yourself a small team of helpers. Friends and family make great recruiting sergeants – your form can be circulated to more individuals in this manner. Be sure to write your name and address on the form so that the copies get back to you.
Sit down and make a list of all your social circles, peer groups, family, clubs, school, work colleagues, clients. Then list the individuals and plan how and when to approach them.
If you are in business or have contacts in businesses, focus on boardrooms and managers with access to budgets. Within your own company, approach your boss with the opportunity to match you pound for pound. If you have an ‘in’ to other companies, give them a go too.
For people you can’t see face to face, send a brief letter or, even better, a fax or email. Try our Diabetes Challenge site. These are less easy to ignore and solicit a more immediate response. It helps to provide a form at the bottom, which is easy to fill in and return. If writing, a stamped SAE works wonders for the small investment.
Work with your local media. If your charity is active in the locality, stress the local interest angle. The best media outlets are those where you are already known – so if you work for a company or any institution that publishes a newsletter or other internal communication, make a beeline for that as early as possible.
Be persistent, be cheeky, be bold.

Come and be part of the fun – send your details to the Fundraising team and we will send you all the materials you’ll need in order to have a successful fundraising event:

Telephone: 020 7424 1000

Email: events.fundraising@diabetes.org.uk