Some Successes... More Failures...

So here we are – one week to go until my next event and I’ve started fundraising with a vengeance. I’ve got even more reason to reach my target of £3,000 now – my (most generous) employer has agreed to match whatever I raise up to a maximum of £3,000. So, in other words, if I raise £3,000, William Hill will also donate £3,000 to the Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity. How cool is that? It’s fantastic. It means that if I can reach my target of £3k, then the hospital will actually get £6k.

But, of course, I have first got to reach that £3,000 target. And it’s really hard. First of all there’s the current economic climate. It’s difficult to pester your friends for donations when you know they can barely afford to pay their bills. As one of my (more cynical) colleagues pointed out. “Well, you’re not going to reach £3,000 are you? Let’s face it, why else would they say they’d match you to that amount?” But he is just one lone (miserable) voice in the workplace. Well, he’s not the only miserable voice in the workplace, but he was the only lone miserly miserable misery who refused to sponsor me. Everybody else at work who I have asked has donated something. One person gave 62 pence as it was all he had on him, but it doesn’t matter. Every penny helps. In fact, I haven’t asked everybody yet, but in two shifts alone my kind colleagues have sponsored me over £150. I count that as a success. Particularly as I haven’t asked everybody yet. In fact, there’s quite a few people yet to go...

As well as seeking sponsorship, I’ve tried to raise funds through other ways. Last time I wrote I related how I had placed my original “Run the Greats” running T-shirts on Ebay for sale in the hope of starting a bidding frenzy which would secure at least a further £100 into the fundraising account. I was quite optimistic of achieving this, I have to say. One of my friends came over for lunch and she was telling me how her husband has raised some money for the Sheffield Children’s Hospital by selling some T-shirts. From these T-shirts he raised a few hundred pounds, she informed me. Admittedly her husband is an ice-hockey player with the Sheffield Steelers and therefore has a certain celebrity status, whereas I’m just a middle-aged mum-of-two, call-centre operator... But, still, if he can raise a few hundred pounds out of just the sale of T-shirts, I should be able to raise at least £50... Right?

Well, I can now inform you that my T-shirts have sold through Ebay. I have packaged them up and tomorrow, when the post office opens, I will be mailing them to their new owner (Why? Sorry, but why would anyone want to buy them? Never mind. None of my business why a man from Cornwall should want to purchase two women’s running T-shirts, size small, both with my name and website on them. What goes on in that man’s home is his own affair. It might be just as well not to know). He is probably just very public spirited and in a very public-spirited manner wishes to selflessly devote cupboard space to my old T-shirts so that he can have an excuse to donate to my cause. Good for him.

And just how much did I make out of these T-shirts for the Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity? Well, sadly, it fell slightly short of the hundreds of pounds mark. It also fell slightly short of the fifty pound mark. In fact, to say that it was more in the region of the three pound mark would be about right. Well, that is to say, approximately right. If I was to say that I sold the T-shirts for one whole English pence, that would be a fact. The three pounds was for the postage. So, in other words, I made £3.01 for these items. Not great. A failure, I suppose. But, as I have said, every penny counts.