Launch your fundraiser for Aegis

Fundraising doesn’t have to be complicated, or involve weeks of planning. Favourite simple fundraising ideas include:
• Cake sale – who doesn’t love to buy a cake, especially for a good cause?
• Quiz – whether it’s a traditional pub quiz or something quirkier, quizzes are a great way to raise money, get people together and spread the word of Aegis’ work
• Tombola – a table of donated items or home-made goodies and a book of numbered tickets are all you need!
• Dress-down / non-uniform day – everyone loves them, and you’re guaranteed a great uptake.
Coffee mornings, gala dinners, African buffets, sponsored walks or film screenings – the ways of raising money are (almost) endless. The most important thing is to HAVE FUN and remember that you’re doing it for a good cause. Music teacher Rowan Cozens (pictured) organised several concerts and recitals with students at home for neighbours, friends and family, raising over £1,000 for Aegis. “Aegis’ work is so relevant and important for youngsters,” she says.
If you want to know more about organising a raffle or lottery visit your local council website or consult the Institute of Fundraising. In some cases you will need a local lottery license – be safe not sorry!

DOWNLOAD SPONSORSHIP FORM

People are usually happy to sponsor for a cause which really matters. Whether you’re abseiling down the Empire State Building or organising a charity cake sale, turn your fundraiser into a top-notch cash generator with our top tips:
* Use an online fundraising page such as JustGiving. These sites do the hard work for you, sending the donations to Aegis and automatically claiming Gift Aid on donations – that’s an extra 25% at no extra cost to you or your supporters! Make your page look personal, with lots of pictures and explanations of what you’re doing and why.
* Share your fundraising page on Twitter and Facebook, or set up a blog or website. Keep it up-to-date and send out emails on your progress, along with pictures of the event once it’s happened.
* Tell everyone – and we mean EVERYONE – what you’re up to and why. Ask your local paper to run a story on your event, and link it to your fundraising page. Try getting sponsored by a local business.
* Keep asking for donations, even when the event is over. Get in touch with the people you missed before the event, show them pictures and describe what you did – you can guarantee they’ll love to bump up your total by a few more pounds.
* The worst people can say is ‘no’! Ask everyone you can think of to support your fundraising efforts. The personal approach works best. Remember to tell people why you’re fundraising as well as how. And always remember to thank your sponsors for their generosity
* Get in touch with us! Simply drop a line to fundraising@aegistrust.org. Our experienced fundraising team can offer advice and additional support to help you make the most of your activity.

CONTACT OUR FUNDRAISING TEAM

Setting up a fundraising page

Being able to point your potential sponsors to a personal fundraising page online is by far the most efficient way to collect sponsorship – especially if you’re likely to do a lot of your fundraising online, through emails and social media. There are multiple websites out there offering ways for people to set up fundraising pages, but we are recommend JustGiving.com – one of the oldest and best.
Please note, this works best if it’s integrated with social media. JustGiving is set up to make it very easy to share things on Facebook and Twitter, so if you don’t have an account on either of those it might be worth creating them now. Please do dive in at www.justgiving.com and set up a user account for yourself (or just log in, if you’re already signed up!). Then you’ll be ready to create your own fundraising page. You may of course wish to do entirely your own thing in this regard, but please feel free to make use of our tips if you find them helpful.

1) Taking part in an organised event

Having set up an account on justgiving.com, do a search on the site for Aegis (or go straight to https://www.justgiving.com/aegistrust). If you’re taking part in an event organised by Aegis, click through to Aegis, click on the ‘fundraise for us’ button, and select the option to take part in an ‘organised event’. Then click on the event you’re signing up for.

Choose a JustGiving web address that’s easy for people to remember. This will be justgiving.com/ – with whatever suffix you choose to write. If your name is Sarah Bloggs and your activity is a 100km bike ride, this could be ‘sarahbloggs100km’ for example.

Do change the image for your page – use a headshot of yourself, perhaps kitted up to take part in the activity you’re seeking sponsorship for. It helps no end to personalise your page and it shows potential sponsors that you’re taking your fundraising for the event seriously!

Complete ‘what you are doing and why’. It’s up to you how you fill this in, but you could use or adapt the following template text: I am doing [INSERT CHOSEN ACTIVITY] for Aegis on [INSERT DATE] because genocide prevention saves lives, needs our support.

The next box is ‘Tell your supporters your story’. There’s some blurb in here already from JustGiving, so you don’t have to write anything – but it’s advisable to personalise it a bit. Once you’re satisfied with your story, just hit ‘save’. The below template text is available for you to use or adapt if you wish:
Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.
I’m raising funds for the Aegis Trust because it’s building peace in places like Rwanda (you can see a little of that for yourself right here: www.aegistrust.org). Now I want to help it extend that vital work to countries like South Sudan and the Central African Republic, where so many people have been killed and displaced simply because of who they are or what they believe.
I’ll be doing [INSERT ACTIVITY] on [INSERT DATE], and I’d be incredibly grateful if you could sponsor me. For anyone who might be interested, I’ll be posting updates on my training progress, and on [INSERT ACTIVITY] itself, on Twitter. Simply follow [INSERT TWITTER HANDLE] to keep up.
Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – saving time and cutting costs for Aegis.

You can edit the target on your page. It makes sense to have a target here – it’s quite satisfying for sponsors to see how much further they’ve taken you towards it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t hit your target, but you might be surprised and exceed it. If you do, you can always raise it later.

Ever watched those big TV fundraisers where as part of the appeal you’re invited to text a word to a number in order to donate a small amount of money? Well, now you can have a number like that for your own fundraising!
Once you’ve set up your page, you can personalise a text giving identity – it just needs to have four letters and two numbers that no-one else has used. Then all your supporters need to do is text your code plus an amount to 70070 and these donations will be included and show up in your fundraising total online.

You can get free digital and printed support packs from JustGiving to help you with your fundraising. You can personalise these with a simple message – which could be something like ‘Time to save lives… by preventing genocide’. There’s also lots more you can do to personalise your page, so enjoy exploring!

JustGiving allows you to set up a team from your page, so why not get one or more of your friends to sign up to your challenge too? Especially if it’s a physically demanding challenge, having at least one other person involved makes the experience sociable and is an invaluable way to maintain momentum.

You’ve set up your fundraising page! Now you just need to tell everyone about it and encourage them to support you. Doing this as efficiently and effectively as possible requires a bit of planning and a bit of lead time before the event (a couple of months is ideal), but can make a huge difference to the amount you’re able to raise. Aegis’ experienced fundraising team can help you with this, too. For additional resources and support, drop an email with a few details of your planned activity to [email protected]

“The best time of our lives, an experience we’ll never forget, and I’m doing it again next year.”

Rony Cohen, 2012 London-Paris ride organiser. (Rony was as good as his word and organised a similar ride the following year.)

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