# Over £313k donated in memory of London Marathon runner

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2012/04/24/over-313k-donated-memory-london-marathon-runner/
- Published: 2012-04-24T09:50:21+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

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](http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/apr/23/london-marathon-death-claire-squires).
By 6pm it had reached £80,000.

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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](https://www.fundraising.co.uk/blog/2010/01/25/7yearold-raises-%C2%A393000-haiti-using-justgiving)
by cycling round his park.

www.justgiving.com/Claire-Squires2

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