Here at eSpares we do love a worthy cause. Some of you may have heard us mention our chosen charities before: Marie Curie and John Taylor Hospice. We focus most of our fundraising efforts on these two wonderful charities, but that doesn’t stop us from supporting other charity events throughout the year.

Last week we raised money around our office for Sport Relief (as we’ve been supporting Sport Relief and Comic Relief for a number of years now). Here are the three fundraising techniques we used this time around.

Dress Down Day

Themed dress up days are a popular way to raise money. Only problem is dressing up requires a bit of effort and not everyone likes it, so the success of these events can vary! Our solution? A dress down day with an optional theme, letting everyone ditch the normal office dress code for a day and wear whatever they like.

We suggested a sports theme for those itching to break out the fancy dress (Sport Relief, sportswear, go figure). So last Friday our offices were attired with an abundance of football shirts, but no budgie smugglers (thank goodness).

Charity Bake Off

If you live in Britain and haven’t heard of the Great British Bake Off then you possibly score even fewer patriotism points than those who don’t know the words to God Save the Queen. We happen to love our country’s noble tradition of enjoying cake with a nice cuppa so we hosted our very own office bake off (with prizes) to raise more funds for Sport Relief.

Cakes were judged by taste and appearance and then sold to our hungry team. Cake sales have always been a great charity fundraiser (who doesn’t love to break up the work day with some delicious home-baked cake) and adding a competitive element meant the cake quality was truly delectable.

Needless to say the winning cake didn’t last long.

Sport Relief Sweepstake

Sport Relief themselves provided some charity sweepstake posters in which half the money went to the sweepstake winner and the other half to charity. Entrants had to guess Jo Brand’s favourite form of exercise: it’s squash if you were wondering.

Any budding fundraisers out there should check the fundraising pages of your chosen charities’ websites as they’re likely to have a whole bunch of ideas, tools and fundraising kits to help you raise money in your workplace.

So how much did we raise?

So you’re probably eager to know how much money we raised from all this fundraising. Well we’re proud to say we raised a grand total of £290.43! According to the Sport Relief website this is enough to do all of the below:

• Help three children working on a rubbish dump in Sierra Leone to go to school by paying for uniforms, books and their travel for a year
• Buy 40 mosquito nets to protect children in Kenya from contracting malaria while they sleep
• Pay for three people with dementia to attend a peer support group for a week

Not bad at all for a day’s work! If you missed out on donating to Sport Relief or are considering fundraising for them, here’s why we think they’re such a great cause.

In the last two years Sport Relief have given:

• Over 189 000 children who were previously unable to attend school an education
• Support to 16,500 people to help improve their mental health
• Life saving vaccines to 734,000 children
• Funding for 23 projects to support those living with dementia

As you can see Sport Relief help causes both in the UK and in the world’s poorest communities globally, in fact they split the money raised 50:50 between the two.

If our fundraising adventures have inspired you to set up a charity event in your own workplace or you have a great fundraising idea you’re bursting to share please do let us know in the comments below. And one final tip for charity fundraising at work – don’t forget to take lots of pictures!

Tags: Charity, fundraising, ideas, office, Sport Relief, tips, work