Best local/regional campaign
Howard Lake | 9 May 2008 | Blogs
For the best campaign conducted by any regional charity, or a branch of a national charity or charities with fundraised income of less than £2m per year excluding legacies. The successful campaign may have used one single fundraising method or a variety of methods.
Chaseley Trust
Diamond Jubilee Appeal
The campaign needed to raise £500,000 in two years from May 2006 to fund major improvements to a residential respite and day care home for people with severe physical disabilities. Target audiences included grant-giving trusts, ex-service organisations, companies and individuals and methods included dm, personal approaches, fundraising events, advertising, press releases, printed publications and a new website. The trust has 40 volunteers who helped on fundraising events and it has built a strong relationship with the local arts and crafts community through staging art exhibitions. There is only one part-time fundraiser.
Advertisement
At the end of February 2008 the Trust had raised £471,000 with just £29,000 needed to reach the appeal target by May 2008.
Children’s Hospice South West
Babe’s Big Appeal
CHSW has been raising money for a second hospice near Bristol which resulted in the launch of a £15m capital appeal. A campaign board was recruited from high profile figures in commerce within the target area and a PR agency, JBP, were key in securing the ‘Babe’ support from author Dick King-Smith and recruiting media onto the communication group.
Dick King-Smith lent CHSW the character of Babe from the book ‘The Sheep Pig’ as a high profile mascot making this sub-brand easily identifiable.
All financial forecasts were exceeded each year and pledges and donations totalled over £5m by the end of 2004. At the beginning of 2008 the appeal was targeted to hit its £15m target by December. The hospice has seen a significant rise in legacy income over the four-year period from £750k to £1.7m in 2007.
The success of this appeal has led to another to raise £5m for a unit in Cornwall to join the original North Devon hospice and the new Bristol unit.
South Yorkshire Flood Disaster Relief Fund
The campaign was set up within two days of the flooding in South Yorkshire in June 2007 with a target of raising £500,000 to alleviate the suffering of individuals and families affected by the flooding, to support community groups who were flooded and provide funding for voluntary sector bodies that were supporting the recovery efforts.
It gained support of the four local authorities, local media and the business community and the British Red Cross, and targeted philanthropists, companies, trusts and individuals. Events were organised. Audiences were reached through intensive media campaigning via local radio stations, through rapid deployment of information to the local press and through the mobilisation of a huge range of ways in which people could pledge support. By November over £1m had been raised and the total continued to rise to a potential £1.5m.
The fund is a grant-making charity that predominantly but not solely gives grants to community groups and raises funds from philanthropists through endowments and distribution funds to causes that matter within the area. It has never done anything like this before.
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.