17-year corporate sponsorship raises £30m for National Gardens Scheme
Howard Lake | 17 April 2011 | News
Seventeen years of sponsorship by Rensberg Sheppards Investment Management of The National Gardens Scheme’s ‘Yellow Book’, which details thousands of gardens in England and Wales open for charity in the summer, has raised over £30 million for charity.
This year’s 750-page Yellow Book has just been published and features 3,700 gardens in England and Wales that will open for charity this summer. For the first time it has been published in full colour.
Jonathan Wragg, Chief Executive, Rensburg Sheppards, said: “The Yellow Book is more than just a guide. It is a hugely powerful fundraising tool, treasured by those that buy it and also by those charities that benefit from its sale and the gardens visited. It’s the vital link in the National Gardens Scheme‘s fundraising chain and this why we’re proud to have supported it for the last 17 years.”
Visitors to the gardens listed in the book, which range from allotments to estates, pay a small donation, on average £3, to charity. Last year 750,000 people visited gardens as part of the scheme and the NGS raised over £2.6 million for its charities. This was distributed as follows:
£550,000 to both Macmillan Cancer Support and Marie Curie Cancer Care.
£450,000 Help the Hospices
£350,000 Crossroads Care
£150,000 Queen’s Nursing Institute
£150,000 Perennial (including the Royal Fund for Gardeners’ Children)
£176,000 National Trust careership scheme
£8,000 Chelsea Physic Garden
The NGS Trustees also voted additional donations to joint ‘guest’ charities for the year. Arthritis Research UK received £70,000, and The Soldiers’ Charity (The Army Benevolent Fund) received £45,000.
The 2011 Yellow Book costs £9.99, or £6 currently at Amazon.co.uk.
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.