Fundraising for Marie Curie
Project Objectives
According to the brief given to us by the client, the purpose of this project was to focus solely on fundraising for Marie Curie. As such, we assessed the time and resources we had at the beginning of the project to set goals for how much we aimed to raise. Moreover, we leveraged SMART goals to better keep on track, maintain a clear direction, and stay motivated throughout the project (Downes et al., 2017).
Overall Goal: £800
Online
Donations
£200
Bake Sale
£200
Raffle
£200
(100 tickets )
Open Mic Night
£200
(70 tickets)
These goals were measurable as we could regularly monitor donations and transactions on the JustGiving page and Sumup App, an app we used to collect payments via a card machine. Moreover, we could keep track of the number of tickets sold on Fatsoma and Raffall for the Open Mic Night and raffle contest respectively.
We based our targets for each event based on the number of people in our team and the given networks we had access to in order to ensure that our goals were achievable. For the online donations on JustGiving, we targeted people within the team’s network such as friends, family, coworkers, and other students as these would be more likely to donate. Moreover, we correctly predicted that putting some focus on working professionals would result in fewer, but larger donations and so would have a higher potential for better results. Regarding the raffle contest, we based our goal of selling 100 tickets on the number of University of Bath students currently in the city and staying in student accommodation complexes that we could easily reach with a food incentive (donuts). For the Bake Sale, our goal was based on two main factors, the expected foot traffic at the location, as well as the number of food donors that we could reach to support our stall based on our personal past experiences with bake sales in Bath. Finally, for our main event, the Open Mic Night, we firstly estimated that each member of the team could get 10 people to attend resulting in a total of 70 tickets sold, and secondly, we could sell each ticket for £3 based on the cost of other similar events so it would not be too expensive and deter people from participating.
Our goals were relevant two-fold. Firstly, it was in line with the brief given to us by the client which was to raise as much money for the charity within the given timeframe in a manner of our choosing. Secondly, we ensured that our events and the raffle prizes were relevant and desirable to the student and wider Bath public so as to better attract people to take part or donate. On top of this, through our physical (decorations and set-up) and online (Instagram marketing) presence, we aligned all our activities with Marie Curie through leveraging their colours and logo, as well as sharing information about the charity. While this was not a goal set out by our client, a secondary motivation for this was to increase awareness and encourage people to think more about Marie Curie.
Finally, our goals were time-bound as we set dates at the beginning of the project as follows:
Online donation
page ( JustGiving )
Opens: 18th July
Closes: 12th August
Bake Sale
29th July,
09:00-13:00
Raffle contest
Opens: 27th July
Closes: 4th August
Open Mic Night
4th August,
19:00 – 00:00
Results
Online Donation Platform (JustGiving)
Over the course of one month, we promoted our JustGiving page on our Instagram account and on WhatsApp through personal messages and sharing to student groups where we also encouraged people to pass on the link on within their own networks. Moreover, we also put up QR codes at our other events so people could easily scan and donate from their phones. This resulted in a total of £628.90 being raised from 24 donors, three times more than our goal.
Raffle Contest
We sold raffle tickets online for one week, advertising prizes on Instagram and WhatsApp. We successfully got 4 local vendors to donate prizes for the contest by reaching out to them in person. Moreover, we also sold tickets to University of Bath students in person on two days (July 29th and August 1st), leveraging food incentives to promote buying. Overall, we sold 83 tickets, raising £149.40, which was slightly below our goal.
Bake Sale
We held a stall at Kingsmead Square where we sold food and drinks sourced from 5 local vendors that we successfully managed to get to donate products for us to sell. While we advertised our Bake Sale before and during the event on Instagram and WhatsApp, many customers were passers-by as we selected a venue that had high foot-traffic and utilized banners and music to draw attention to our stall. Overall, we raised £235.99 from food and drink sold, as well as an additional £65.7 from cash donations via our collection buckets.
Open Mic Night
The Open Mic (& Karaoke) Night was held at The Canon, a local pub in Bath’s city centre. We advertised this event on Instagram and leveraged our personal networks and the University of Bath music society to get performers to sign up. The event was a success with us receiving large amounts of positive feedback from attendees and performers alike. Choosing a venue that was central and allowing people to buy tickets at the door (using a card reader and the Sumup app) allowed for many last-minute attendees. Overall, we had considerably more attendees than expected with a total of 10 performers and 101 tickets being sold, resulting in us raising £300.65. While this did make the event slightly more complex, sufficient prior planning and a clear division of roles for the night allowed the event to carry on smoothly and successfully.