Just Ask John campaign makes use of volunteer muscle

Howard Lake | 22 October 2002 | News

Access to large numbers of volunteers can be exploited by charities in many ways. For example, St John Ambulance volunteers will be helping supermarkets during December by packing shoppers’ bags in return for a voluntary donation.

Some commercial organisations would love to have access to the large volunteer forces that charities can marshall. Some charities are capitalising on this and effectively hiring out their volunteers in return for a donation.

During December 2002, volunteers from the UK’s First Aid, transport and care charity, St. John Ambulance, will be in local supermarkets across the country, packing shoppers bags in return for donations as part of the ‘Just ask John to pack your bags’ fundraising campaign. Supermarkets that have shown support for the campaign include Kwiksave, Iceland and Co-op stores.

The ‘Just ask John to pack your bags’ campaign has been designed not only to help St. John Ambulance continue its lifesaving work in local communities by raising funds, but also to ease the strain on thousands of Christmas shoppers and cashiers, by making the journey through the checkout faster and easier.

The charity has over 45,000 volunteers who in 2001 provided over four million hours of support to the community. Each year volunteers treat over 200,000 casualties at a large number of public events, ranging from a village fete to the Commonwealth Games 2002.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.