Read about our Big Give Christmas Challenge

28 Jan , 2019 Our News

Read about our Big Give Christmas Challenge

Happy new year! We hope you all had a fantastic time with your loved ones over the Christmas break. At Plant Your Future, we wish to start 2019 with a huge thank you to all the supporters of our Big Give Christmas Challenge.

At the end of last year, we set ourselves the ambitious target of raising £10,000 in one week – between 27thNovember and 4thDecember. The decision came as part of a new strategy to upscale both our work in Peru and our fundraising activity in the UK. This was a huge deal for us, as all of our previous fundraising attempts have been smaller scale, limited to our friends and existing networks. Our previous efforts have been made up of sponsored events, quiz nights and coffee mornings, so we saw this as a new challenge reaching out to not only existing donors but also new people.

However, with a clear plan and lots of wonderful new materials illustrating our on-the-ground operation in Peru, the pounds started rolling in from both existing and new donors.  Our supporters really stepped up to the mark, helping us to reach the halfway point in just three days and ultimately enabling us to smash our goal by raising an incredible grand total of £11,747.50. We couldn’t have achieved this without the generosity of The Coles-Medlock Foundation, a family grant-making organisation that support international development projects. The foundation matched all donations, encouraging people to reach into their pockets and ultimately achieve an amazing result.

It wasn’t just those who donated that we would like to thank. Without the tireless efforts of our volunteers and Board of Trustees, there wouldn’t have been a campaign. A huge shout out has to go to our chairman Jenny Henman, new trustee and communications lead Grace Clegg, and our summer intern Jenny Oster-Warrior for dedicating their time and energy to the success of this campaign, as well as our trustees, for their participation in our trustee video – an excellent opportunity to introduce our newest member to the Board. You can view it here: https://bit.ly/2TZySBC

A massive thank you must also go to Adam Dickens of Taking Pictures, Changing Lives who produced probono our Big Give Christmas Challenge video. His photography helped us to showcase the charity’s work, and some of the incredible and passionate smallholder farmers we work with. The video interviews with our farmers really helped us bring our cause to life and explain why the money was needed. Adam also created our campaign video which you can see here: https://bit.ly/2D9Bjvp

Participating in the challenge was invaluable – with no previous experience of crowd funding/match funding campaigns, it was a fantastic opportunity to develop our knowledge. Every donation Plant Your Future receives is critical to helping us continue our work in 2019. The proceeds from the Big Give Christmas Challenge will help us to provide our farmers with vital pruning and weeding tools, training and on-the-ground support from a field technician.

Thank you, finally, to The Big Give for this opportunity and for all the support provided in the lead up to, and during, the campaign.

 

 

 

Written for Plant Your Future by Chloe Tonkin, PR volunteer


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