Fundraising can seem daunting when you sign up, but once you get going you'll be amaze with what you can achieve! Here are some inspiring fundraising experiences from some of our previous participants to help get you started...

Building A Fantastic Fundraising Total!
Costain Group, a leading UK engineering and construction company, entered three teams for the 2010 CARE Construction Challenge, and raised over £10,000 for CARE. Team Leader Phil Whitney told us how he and his colleagues raised such a wonderful total.

“We started our fundraising at our site New Years Party, by organising a raffle, with prizes donated by Costain, which raised £430. We organised lots of events, from a quiz night at a local pub, to a rugby evening at Narberth RFC, who we sponsor. We also organised a Costain Golf Day held at Haverfordwest Golf Club, recruiting 12 teams, and we held an evening do with prizes and a raffle to make even more money. We also had collection tins on site, sold sweets at reception and had a swear box (very lucrative!). We also used traditional fundraising through our justgiving page, and asking friends and family for sponsorship. Finally we approached members of our supply chain for donations, which raised a fantastic £5,000.

“Our fundraising has been a huge team effort and we have been helped along with local press and radio coverage in Pembrokeshire and nationally which has been arranged by our public relations manager Phil Baker and also the CARE PR Executive. We are very proud of our efforts, it’s been great fun and we’ve really felt a sense of achievement seeing the total going up. We are all looking forward to next year!"

Gucci Group Cycle for Bangladesh
Gucci Group raised an incredible £33,585 from their Gucci Group Paris to London Bike Ride in September 2010, to support a Bangladeshi women’s health and education programme. A team of 20 took part and worked together to raise sponsorship in a variety of ways. Burak Cakmak, Gucci Group Director told us:

“I was inspired to organise a Gucci Group Paris to London bike ride after taking part in another CARE event. Our Company paid the costs of the bike ride, so every penny we raised would go directly to CARE. Colleagues from our UK, France and Italy offices all signed up to the event and I encouraged each team member to set up their own justgiving page to send to friends and family. As well as my own page, I set up a joint Gucci Group justgiving page to send to our suppliers, which I kept updated with our fundraising total to inspire them to sponsor us. I also worked with CARE to prepare a donation proposal from their foundation the PPR Corporate Foundation for Women’s Dignity and Rights, who donated £8,333.

“The team were very creative in their fundraising, thinking about who they knew and could ask to support us. An Alexander McQueen sample sale raised £1,225 and a luxury raffle of items donated from Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney raised £1,058. Our IT team donated the proceeds from selling our old Blackberry handsets, which raised over £2,000. We also had cake bakes, a race night and even washed the cars in our company car park. Everyone worked together and we really enjoyed our fundraising, and were very proud to have raised £33,585.

“The bike ride was much tougher than expected, but knowing that we were making a difference really helped us get through the pain barrier. I really enjoyed it in hindsight, and we are already planning about our next challenge!”

Thank you to the whole cycling team, everyone at Gucci Group and all their supporters.

Climbing to success
Talbot Underwriting Ltd raised an incredible £12,694 for the 2010 CARE 24 Peaks Challenge. Teamleader Sabrina Oufella explained how they reached this fantastic amount.

“We had a team target of £6,000, which we are delighted to say we doubled! We had a fundraising brainstorm to start with, and each person organised a different fundraising idea. We sent personalised emails to the whole company and all of our individual contacts, telling them about the event, and why we were taking part. We also linked our justgiving pages to our facebook pages and e-signatures to get even more people to donate that way. We sent regular updates on how much we’d raised and how our training was going, including pictures of us climbing Snowdon to remind people to sponsor us.

“We organised a tuck shop at work by buying chocolate bars, crisps and sweets from wholesale providers, and selling them at the same price as in the supermarket. This raised £300 over 2 months. We also had a collection tin in the kitchen to collect any spare change colleagues had after buying lunch. Finally, when we were asked, we sponsored other people for their marathons and challenges, so they would sponsor us in return! My advice to anyone fundraising is pester people. Based on the principle that if you don’t ask, you don’t get, we asked a lot to get a lot!”

Andarko raise £17,000 from their 3 Peaks Challenge
Tracey Badham shares how they raised this magnificent amount:

"Once again the staff at Anadarko got right behind the 3 Peaks fundraising, we started early, back in February, and with a mixture of raffles, auctions, traditional Indian lunches (cooked and served by team members) and quiz nights. We also held a custard pie throwing competition using our extremely sporting senior managers as the target. The thought of being able to throw a sticky custard pie at your manager was too much to resist for most of us, and we raised an incredible £2080 on this one event.

The CARE staff, as usual, ensured that the event went smoothly; the whole team were exhausted, but so elated to have completed not only the 3 Peaks, but to have raised such a considerable sum for CARE International."

We CARE too
A team from CARE International took part in the Walkathon, raising £5,316, led by Head of Challenge, Neil Munro.

“We split up our fundraising total into personal and joint fundraising, to make our target feel manageable. We all met one lunchtime and brain stormed ideas. We set up a justgiving page for our suppliers and asked our Facilities Manager to approach them for donations. Our Chief Executive asked board members for sponsorship too. We organised a cake bake every Friday for a month, which was very popular, and we had a very successful jumble sale which raised £460. Our Head of Private Sector Engagement organised a secret squirrel, inviting people to send him their secrets (only ones they were prepared to make public), and then charged people to guess whose secrets they were. We also arranged a raffle at our summer party. Everyone had great fun with their fundraising and we were delighted to raise £5,316 for CARE.”