# Mencap and Enable to benefit from Blue Peter Appeal

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2003/11/19/mencap-and-enable-benefit-blue-peter-appeal/
- Published: 2003-11-19T00:00:00+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**This year’s Blue Peter appeal aims to raise £500,000 for Mencap and its sister
charity in Scotland, Enable. Mencap’s Web site offers an impressive tool to help
increase the funds raised.**

The Blue Peter Get Together Appeal will raise funds to help as many children with
a learning disability as possible to go to out of school clubs. The BBC TV children’s
programme is encouraging viewers to hold bring and buy sales and sell cards that
they have designed to raise funds.

The Mencap Web site helps promote the appeal very well, and is a key element in 
the design-your-own-card-for-sale activity. It mentions the appeal on its front 
page, and features a range of information about the appeal and how to get involved.
This includes details of how to get your Get Together pack, which has “everything
you need to organise a Bring & Buy sale to raise money for the appeal,” plus plus
five blank greetings cards for volunteer fundraisers to design and sell. The real
innovation is in the online facility to make Get Together greeting cards. Using 
a Flash programme, you can drag and drop images and text to create your own card,
ready for printing out. All cards come with the Blue Peter Get Together logo appearing
on the back.

## Advertisement

In the same way you can also create using the Mencap Web site a poster which supporters
can make to advertise their Bring & Buy sale. This can be printed out or e-mailed
to friends.

Allowing supporters to create drag-and-drop cards is not new. Christian Aid created
such a Christmas card service on its Web site in 2002. Mencap’s tool goes further
though in allowing supporters to create a card online that is specifically to be
sold to raise funds.

When we tried creating a poster online today it seems over 1,000 other people had
already used the service.