Congratulations to Anna Butler!
Congratulations to Anna Butler! Anna is training to run the London Marathon alongside friends Jo and Karen, and they have joined forces to organise a wide variety of activites. With 4 weeks to go, the team have aleady reached their target but they are planning more! Anna tells us more below.
Congratulations Anna! Please tell our readers what you've been up to!
Myself, my former colleague and friend Jo, and our good friend Karen, are all training to run the London Marathon for MACS. We decided to form a fundraising team and join forces to raise as much as we can for MACS. Here are some of the events and ideas we have done to raise our money!
First of all, I set up a Virgin Money Giving page and promoted my link a lot over the last few months. My lovely sister Nathalie said if I reached £300 by a certain date she would have her very long hair cut very short so I posted this and got to that target very quickly! I also ran little competitions in exchange for donations, for example I gave away a Mrs Hinch hamper of goodies.
Karen’s two little boys have been trying to do 131 miles (5 marathons) on their bikes to support us, which they have almost completed and have so far raised £225!
As until recently myself, Karen and Jo all worked together in the same primary school so we organised a Movie Night for the children! We charged £2.50 per ticket and our local Morrison’s provided popcorn and drinks. We showed 4 films simultaneously in 4 different rooms. We had to use the hall for The Greatest Showman as it was so popular! We made £375 from this event!
My next idea involved Krispy Kreme donuts- everyone loves a doughnut! I googled a lot of fundraising ideas at the beginning and this one stood out. Krispy Kreme will sell trays of a dozen donuts to fundraisers for £5.50. We sold them on for £1 each or £10 per dozen. We advertised Krispy Kreme Friday for the day we broke up for half term. We didn’t know how many boxes to order so went for 22 (264 donuts) and we sold out within 5 minutes!!! We made £142 but as it had been so successful we decided to do it again 3 weeks later. This time I took pre orders of 50 boxes(600 donuts!) this was the maximum number of boxes available from KK so I contacted them and begged them for another 20 boxes. Again we sold all of them (840 donuts!) and made £350!
The next fundraiser was a Quiz night. I contacted a local pub and asked them to host a quiz night. They were more than happy to do this and did most of the leg work. We advertised it on Facebook and had all but one table booked before the night. We begged borrowed and stole prizes for the raffle and we pre-sold tickets to lots of people as they didn’t need to attend the quiz to buy one. We had some amazing prizes including an annual family pass to the sealife centre and many vouchers and freebies donated from local businesses! It was an amazing night and we made over £350!
We have almost reached our target now between us all but next Friday (5th April) we are launching our new daily mile track on our school field. We have named it Fit Friday! Myself and Karen will be running around the quarter mile track 105 times throughout the school day and the children will be coming up in their classes and seeing how many laps they can do in a half an hour slot. They have taken sponsor forms home and are busy getting sponsors for Macs! It will be a very exciting day!
Wow, that's incredible! You've worked so hard and it has clearly paid off! Do you have any advice for other fundraisers?
We have really enjoyed all the various fundraising events we have organised. If I could give advice to future fundraisers, I would say do your research, keep it simple, and involve local businesses and people if possible. We have found so much generosity out there! And don’t forget the donuts....everyone loves a donut! 🍩🤗
That's brilliant, huge well done again! How are you feeling ahead of the Marathon in 4 weeks' time?
There have been highs and lows in our training but I'm really looking forward to the day and can't wait to soak up the atmosphere on such an amazing occasion! The London Marathon was always on my bucket list and as I'm 40 in the summer I'm so glad I have been given this opportunity!
