Over £313k donated in memory of London Marathon runner
Howard Lake | 24 April 2012 | News
Over £313,000 has been donated in just over a day to Samaritans in memory of Claire Squires who died while running the London Marathon on Sunday to raise funds for the charity. The total has increased by over £5,000 in the past five minutes.
She had raised £400 herself by the time of the Marathon. The additional donations have been made in response to extensive news coverage of her death. Both Samaritans and JustGiving, whose site was used by Ms Squires to create a fundraising page, have offered their condolences to her family and friends.
Donations did not start being made until yesterday after details of Ms Squires and her supported charity were made public. Within a few hours the donation total on her page had jumped to over £50,000. By 6pm it had reached £80,000.
By the end of last night, the total had passed £200,000 and by early this morning it had reached £240,000.
By this morning, over 27,709 donations had been made to her appeal.
Her JustGiving page has been tweeted over 7,700 times and liked on Facebook over 28,000 times.
Ms Squires had previously raised funds for the RAF Association by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in 2010.
Ms Squires chose to support Samaritans because her mother has been a volunteer for the charity for 24 years. Catherine Johnstone, Chief Executive of Samaritans, said: “We are supporting the family through this very difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone who knew her.
“We desperately wish that it was not under these circumstances but we have been overwhelmed by the response from people donating in Claire’s memory. These donations will be put into a tribute fund and, following discussions with the family, will go towards projects they feel would have been important to Claire.”
Online donation services like JustGiving have seen other unexpected surges of giving to individuals’ appeals, including Charlie Simpson who raised over £210,000 for UNICEF by cycling round his park.
www.justgiving.com/Claire-Squires2
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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.