Fundraising Tips

One more post about fundraising…

I wouldn't call myself an expert fundraiser. I still feel lucky to have been able to raise all the money I did for Project Trust, it really took me by surprise how quickly the total shot up. Nevertheless, as requested, I am going to attempt to give some inspiration to future fundraisers, Project Trust Volunteers or otherwise, through a few top tips that I have learnt during my short money raising adventure.

Don’t Delay

At the beginning, I panicked. £5400 was about tenfold the amount of money I had ever dealt with in my life, and I felt like I had to pluck it out of thin air. Or I’d be in serious debt to my parents, or stuck at home with no plans for a whole year. What had I got myself into? I thought it was impossible.

It turned out that a certain amount of urgency was a very good thing. If you get the ball rolling as soon as possible, then by the middle of your fundraising it will have picked up considerable speed. The first thing to do is to tell everybody about it, then clear plenty of space in your timetable.

I started getting the word out about my fundraising in October. Notice how the results are not immediate- it’s only after about a month and a half that the money really starts to come in. If you have limited time to raise your money, you can’t waste that month and half.

Trusts

If you are raising money for a charity, on behalf of a charity or to do something educational or charitable, then the next step should be to start researching charitable trusts and writing letters to them. You will be amazed by the number of these organisations out there, but will find it difficult to find any sort of detailed information about any of them. I have three main tips to do with trusts.

1. Research as thoroughly as possible and cross-check everything. Only write letters once you are sure that the trust’s aims match what you are doing and that you are eligible to be given a grant from them. Sometimes the information from one source is vague, but a quick Google search will shed more light. You should expect to spend most of your time saying “No, no, no, no, maybe…. actually no, no, no…” Treat it as a great success when you come across a trust that is worth writing to. It will take several days of research to come up with a good list, but keep reminding yourself that there is no other way you could earn £4000 from a few days’ work.
2. Focus on local trusts. 94% of the money I raised from trusts came from Scotland, and almost half of it was from within my home town. Location is a way for trusts to see you as connected and relevant to them.
3. Personalise letters. Once again this will take a lot of time, but if you write a couple of sentences in each letter to show that you understand the aims of the trust you are writing to, and how what you are doing is relevant to them, your success rate should be a lot higher than if you send exactly the same letter to every trust.

My pie chart shows quite how substantial the portion raised from charitable trust can be.

Events

1. Think about what you are good at, and think about what your friends and family are good at, as you will need their help. As a keen musician it made sense for me to go busking, and hold a fundraising gig. However due to my atrocious marketing skills, I left the ticket selling for the gig to other, more persuasive people. Don’t be afraid to show off what you can do, and ask for lots of help in holding events. Every helper will probably spread the word to other people, and the chances are they will donate some money too.
2. Target different groups of people each time you hold an event. I held dinner parties for my parents’ friends, which raised lots of money without putting any more strain on my own friends. Busking in Perth, Dundee, Edinburgh and even Surrey spread the cost over hundreds of members of the public, just giving a couple of coins each.
3. Timing is important. Look back up at the line graph and notice how steep the gradient is over December- Christmas is prime time for all fundraisers. Hitch on to other celebrations too- Bonfire Night, Mothers’ Day, Fathers’ Day, Easter… If you are putting on events for your own age group, think about catching people at the end of term or just after exam periods.

I think the most important thing about any fundraising mission is to make it your own. Give it your unique style; see if you can come up with something that hasn't been done before. Take other people’s ideas and turn them on their head or combine them in new ways. There are endless lists of ways to fundraise, but the best one for you is the one that you design or tweak yourself.

Starting to Count Down

With school finished forever, it is time to start preparing for the next adventure.

In about 45 days from now, I will be starting the 4500 mile journey across the Atlantic to my new home, somewhere deep in the Guyanese Rainforest. This rainforest is said to be one of the most unexplored and unspoilt in the world, with thousands of unknown species of plants and animals; vast areas of uncharted land, broken up by countless rivers, creeks and waterfalls; and virtually no sign of human inhabitance.

I have started watching a BBC series called "Lost Land of the Jaguar", about an expedition to Guyana to explore its wildlife, from army ants and enormous spiders to giant otters and 8-foot anacondas. It has taught me what not to do, such as put your hand inside rotten trees or holes in the ground, swim too far away from the bank (in case of caiman or piranha), abseil down Kaieteur Falls, or leave your food out at night for the crickets. Despite the nasty looking insect bites I can't wait to be there myself. It is an alien world to me, with endless new things to discover and learn.

 We had to buy the DVD to watch the program (from 2008) but you can still read about it here or see a few clips from it here.

The Guyanese rainforest is not only important to the few people who live in it, it is of course a vital part of the world's ecosystem, a major influence of the world's climate, and one of the world's few resources yet to be fully exploited. For a poor country such as Guyana, the temptation to bring in much needed money through logging is high, and very little of the forest is protected. Despite some attempts by western countries to invest in sustainable development in Guyana in return for limiting carbon emissions from deforestation, the rate at which the country's 18.5 million hectares of forest is being destroyed continues to increase.

It is worrying to think that time is running out, if you want to see the world's great wildernesses, that sooner or later mankind may have sawed and drilled and dug its way into every corner of the globe, on its constant search for wealth to feed its growing consumer population. I truly hope that there is some way we can learn to live more sustainably, therefore making it possible to leave some parts of the globe to themselves, giving other species room to breathe.

I am excited to count down the days until I go to Guyana, because of the wilderness of its forest and the remoteness of the people within it. It would be unfair for the next generation if they had to count down the days until these things were destroyed.

Chenapou

After months of tentatively answering questions like "when are you going" and "are you definitely going to Guyana" with grunts of "um not sure really", it is a relief to finally say my project has indeed been confirmed and that my estimated departure date is the 17th August.

Chenapou will be my destination, a remote village of about 500 inhabitants on the banks of the Potaro, 3 hours journey by speedboat upriver from the famous Kaieteur falls. Here there is a primary school of 170 pupils, where Project Trust volunteers have been teaching for four years, as very few qualified Guyanese teachers are prepared to work in such a remote area.

There is very little information to be found on Chenapou, although a google search returns a page from the government website about Kaieteur National Park. In summary, the local people are from the Patamona Tribe and have their own dialect, although English is also spoken. Their way of life is still very much dependant on the forest and the river, with a considerable amount of their diet consisting of different forms of the root vegetable Cassava. They make Cassava into a powder called Farine, they make bread from it, they even make drinks out of it.

My accommodation will be a semi-detached house on stilts, presumably shared with my partner, which is even fancy enough to have a flushing toilet and solar panels to provide electricity.

Not that it reveals anything at all, you can view the location of Chenapou or Chenapowu as it seems to be alternatively spelt, on google maps here. The satellite image reveals it to be in the middle of a mysterious pixelated cloud. I find this makes it all the more exciting!

For now it is a case of getting vaccines, disclosures, references, letters... filling in all the paperwork and waiting for training in July when I'll find out the full details about my project and find out who I'm going with.

Below are some photos taken by a current volunteer in Chenapou who has a blog here.

Gig for Guyana (and the Arctic)

In some ways reaching the fundraising target for Project Trust in January felt like a bit of a disappointment. I thought I was just getting into the fundraising mindset, starting to enjoy the challenges it presented. For me it was a completely new skill, and that £5432.10 countdown figure provided a goal to strive for, providing some extra motivation when the pressures of school or music were not enough. And of course, it is always working towards the goal that provides all the satisfaction, not achieving the goal itself- it is about the journey, not the destination. So "completing" the fundraising seemed like a dead end. Until I realised that it wasn't.

For a start, any further money I raise for the charity Project Trust can be used to help other volunteers who have been less fortunate than myself with their fundraising for any reason. This is something that I see as a good cause, and I do not doubt that Project Trust will use the money wisely. Secondly, there are plenty of costs associated with my year overseas that are not covered by the £5400, including vaccinations and  travel to and from the Isle of Coll for my training course. For this I have set up a second fund, so that donations can still be made that will directly go towards my project. And, if nothing else, fundraising can be great fun, and I didn't want to see all my plans go to waste!

One such plan that I felt was too good to ditch simply because it was no longer necessary, was a fundraiser gig at a music venue close to my school in the centre of Dundee called "Non Zero's", (I have the owner, a great guy named Dave, to thank for letting me hire the place for the night, and for his professional live sound engineering which is a crucial part of any musical event). This event soon became a collaboration, after I talked to Katie Lumsdaine, an adventurous girl in the year below me at school who is spending her summer in the Arctic with the British Schools Exploring Society.

The Courier- Katie's Arctic Expedition

She was looking for events to help her raise the money for this expedition, and I was someone with an event, looking for somewhere that needed the funds it could raise. We decided to split the profits, but I reckon that her help in publicising the event meant that I personally raised more for Project Trust than I would have if I had been on my own for the event.  My strength was providing the music, finding the bands, hers was spreading the word, selling the tickets. Together we made it quite a success.

The photos below were taken by Jamie Ford and Linzi Peters and show most of the musicians performing. I'm sad to say I have none of the headlining act- two members of the Dundee band Seams played a stunning acoustic set which was the perfect atmospheric ending to the evening.

Alison Ross

Honolulu Circus

The finale of Lewis Davie's set, including brass section and saxophones!

Katie and Harry, going to two very different places!

Bedford Rascals

After expenses, the gig raised around £250, which I was incredibly pleased with. I know that our target audience- teenagers- is not an easy one to raise money from, as most of them are pushed to find enough cash for themselves. Seeing so many people turn up for the gig in support of both my gap year and Katie's expedition was fantastic, I hope they all enjoyed themselves as much as I did!

In total I have now raised over £7000 for Project Trust, which is something that I feel proud to have achieved. All that is left now is to start putting that money to good use.

First Shot at my New Job

Teaching a Lesson at Viewlands

Going back to visit my primary school, almost six years after I left, seemed at first like a journey back in time, with many familiar faces welcoming me back as if I'd only been gone for the weekend. On my way across I eyed up the little forest of saplings behind the hockey pitch of Perth Academy, and remembered that I helped to plant those trees whilst in my last year at Viewlands. I've grown a lot since then but if it were a race the trees would be winning. Once inside, the corridors seemed an awful lot smaller, the ceilings a lot lower, but there was still the same atmosphere of business, the same clatter of voices and plates in the lunch hall.

After my visit last term to talk to the whole school about my Guyana project, the children took part in a dress down day and managed to raise over a hundred pounds for Project Trust to go towards my fundraising total. I hoped I could thank the school for this fantastic contribution in some way, and it just so happened that the P7 teachers had already come up with the perfect idea. Seeing as their pupils were studying the rainforests in class, I was given the opportunity to teach a lesson on the geography of Guyana and link it to what they had been learning. This would also be good practise for me at being charge of a class of children, something that will effectively be my job for most of next year.

It turned out that the children knew a lot more about rainforests than I did, so I left that part of the lesson for them to teach me, and after a bit of map-work locating Guyana, I focussed on a couple of ideas they will soon be meeting in secondary school geography; population density and climate. You may be interested to see what they discovered: 

Population Density of Guyana = 3.5 people/km²

Population Density of UK = 256 people/km²

If this seems like a huge difference already, try taking into account the fact that 90% of Guyana's population lives along the coastal strip (10% of the land), leaving a very sparsely populated interior indeed. In the lesson we discussed the various reasons for this.

I was incredibly impressed by the willingness of the P7 classes to learn and participate in the lesson, with bucketfuls of enthusiasm, thoughtful answers, interested questions and respect. It was really this that made my visit a success, as well as the generous support from Mrs Gellatly and Mrs Oliver who photocopied my worksheets and ensured I had everything I needed for the lesson.

Thank you so much to the teachers and pupils for a rewarding and encouraging teaching experience. I hope to be back, perhaps with a bit more first hand knowledge of the rainforest for you next time!

The Land of Many Waters

An introduction to the little known worlds of Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana...

'Guiana' has long been the name given by the native people to the mysterious, mostly unexplored land of dark, dense rainforest that lies behind a 900 mile stretch of muddy coastline, just above of the Equator on the north east flank of South America. However Guiana is not only a name, but also a description, a reflection upon the most influential feature the country has on the lives of its people- it means the 'Land of Many Waters'.

Today Guiana consists of three territories, marked by vague, disputed boundaries. The largest of these is Guyana, which lies to the west, bordering Venezuela, and has roughly the same surface area as Britain. Closest to the mouth of the mighty Amazon river is French Guiana and sandwiched in between is Suriname.

The sheer abundance of water in Guiana previously led people to believe that the country was nothing more than a closely packed collection of islands. Solely in Guyana, over 1500 rivers gush through the forest, racing to the Atlantic Ocean. They do so with such turbulence that no ship bigger than a canoe makes it further than 90 miles inland along even the largest rivers, without being torn apart in the torrents. These rivers define boundaries, isolate tribes, block passage through the country and act as a lifeline, a source of food for those who are brave enough are to inhabit the interior. The rivers are home to hundreds of species of fish, perhaps including the largest freshwater fish in the world, as well as less friendly creatures such as stingrays and electric eels.

Over three times as much rain falls each year on Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, as does on the Scottish town of Perth. Water is everywhere in Guyana, it fills the air, resides in the swamps and feeds the rainforest, creating the prime conditions for a miraculous ecosystem in which many undiscovered species still roam. Water rots buildings and spreads disease, it constantly threatens the inhabitants of Georgetown, who live precariously below sea level, with only a man-made wall holding back the Ocean, which is said to be the colour of plaster due to Peruvian sediments, washed across the continent.

However, Guiana is by no means the only name ever used to describe this watery world. Early French and English maps label the region as 'Equinoctiale' or 'Caribana, Land of Twenty-one Tribes'. For a while to the Dutch it was the original New Zealand, before they came up with an enchanting name that captured the sense of danger and remoteness, the possibility of success, the curiosity associated with an unknown world. They called it de Wilde Kust, 'The Wild Coast'. There are no natural harbours along the entire coastline of Guiana, although it is on this 10 mile wide muddy stretch of land by the sea that 90% of the population live.

The naming of the place which lies between the Orinoco and Amazon rivers is ultimately a trivial thing, for the simple reason that it has never truly been owned by humans. Throughout its turbulent history of bloody wars between French, British and Dutch settlers, current day Guyana changed hands 9 times, Suriname 6 times and French Guyana 7 times. These squabbles over sugar plantations and coastal towns never changed the fact the vast majority of Guiana is untamed, unexplored jungle, they never made any part of the country an easy place for humans to thrive or gave the population any real sense of national identity.

Even today the population of Guyana is a mere 750,000, and not a single road leads to the outside world. Without an aeroplane, it takes four weeks to travel to the interior of the country. Most of its inhabitants are insects, trees, snakes or jaguars. It is a comforting, solid reminder that the world has in no way been conquered by human development, that nature still rules in some little forgotten corners.

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