Regional charities invited to take part in UK's oldest flag day
Howard Lake | 20 March 2005 | News
The organisers of Alexandra Rose Day are inviting regional charities to take part in the 2005 collecting campaign in June 2005.
Alexandra Rose Day was started by Queen Alexandra in 1912 and has since raised millions of pounds for good causes. This year, collections will take place in June with participating charities able to choose what they spend the money collected on. It is specifically designed for the smaller charities that don’t have the infrastructure to mount their own collecting or flag day.
Volunteers are provided with a box of the pink and yellow roses and a region to patrol.
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Lady Grade, wife of the late Lord Lew Grade, vice chairman of Alexandra Rose Day, said: “Lots of small charities do a wonderful job helping people in so many different ways but they don’t have the back up that we have to arrange a flag day.
“We can provide equipment, licences, expertise and a national profile but we need them to know about us. Our only criterion is that they are `people caring ‘in the widest sense.
“The little charities we help, help the old, the young, the ill, the handicapped and the lonely.”
This year’s annual flag day takes place on Wednesday 15 June in London, and on Saturday 11 or 18 in most other places.
Participating charities keep 70% of all they collect, sending 30% to the Alexandra Rose Day charity. New groups pay a one-off registration fee of £30, and of course participating charities have to provide the volunteer collectors.
Collections at supermarkets can be arranged on other dates as well, and house-to-house collectionscan be held from 4 June to 18 June inclusive.
The first Rose Day in June 1912 involved 10,000 women selling wild roses in London in honour of Queen Alexandra. It raised £32,000, the equivalent of around £2 million today,
“for the benefit of the hospitals and charitable institutions in which Her Majesty is interested.” Since then it has become an annual event specifically to benefit smaller and regional charities.
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.