At the beginning of July I stumbled across something that I was instantly interested in; Money Supermarket's Retail Royalty Challenge (#RetailRoyaltyChallenge). The well-known comparison and money-saving website was offering bloggers of all kinds to spend £30 on a local charity of their choice. I love charity fundraising, having previously run a shop and blog for a well-known British charity. I do a lot in my free-time for non-profit organisations and am hoping to volunteer at my local food bank at Christmas time. I grew up with a parent who relied heavily on the work and resources of charities and so I see working for free and raising awareness as a very important step in helping others.
Being a local charity challenge, I selected Demelza, a children's hospice covering London and the South East. I selected Demelza for multiple reasons; I'm a parent, my husband's aunt is the head of fundraising for our area and because it's important to us as a family. I hope that you never ned the help of a charity like Demelza, however for those that do, I cannot express the work they do and the difference they make to not just the lives of the children, but their families too. Providing much-needed respite and care, the staff of Demelza 'add life to days where days cannot be added to life'. It says it all really.
Money Supermarket kindly transferred £30 into my Paypal account and I contacted the head of fundraising for Sussex as well as the head of fundraising for Eastbourne (where I live). We decided that given the short time I had left of the challenge (I signed up late, typical me) that the best thing I could do was help the Eastbourne fundraising team stock for their up and coming tombola.
I contacted a lot of businesses, local and national, however time was running out and so I took matters into my own hands and headed to my local Sainsbury's instead. Here's what I got...
2x 3packs of bubbles - £2.50 each
1x ball game - £3
1x Disney colouring book - £1.99
2x skipping ropes - £1 each
2x Crayola colouring pencils - £2.99 (buy one get one free)
1x Play Doh toy - £2.99
2x scented candles - £2 each
1x fudge - £2
1x Lindt Lindor chocolates - £1.50
1x Ferraro Rocher chocolates - £1.50
1x feed the birds set - £3
I was really happy with what I got (especially the buy one get one free) as I was under a very tight time limit when I went (about ten minutes) and I had walked in with the goal of buying ten items for the tombola, I came away with fifteen!! I was thrilled that I got so much, my biggest concern at the moment is the chocolate and fudge melting, fingers-crossed on that one!
I'd like to say a big, big thank you to Money Supermarket, without their kind donation for this challenge, it would be £30 that the charity would've had to of found themselves and it went a long way towards their fundraising efforts for the summer holidays. To bolas and other stall events bring in a lot of money for charities, especially in a seaside town like Eastbourne.
If you would like to learn more about Demelza, take a look at their website.
Thank you for reading!
ClareLabels: Charity, Demelza, donation, money
