Recycling with Jasmine

Fellow fundraisers share the highs and lows of their journeys with raising money.

What has been your biggest barrier when fundraising?

The biggest barrier has probably been thinking of ideas, which has obviously been made harder by Covid. Creating fundraisers that I think people would engage with and see as worthy of donating has been incredibly difficult as fundraisers where people can interact with you, such as bake sales, are not possible. I feel as though people are less willing to donate when they are not able to communicate with you as to where the money is going or get a product in return.

How did you get started with your fundraising?

My friend and I decided to start by hosting a clothes drive. We posted about it just after Christmas and, as the January sales were coming up, we felt that a lot of people would be wanting to make space in their wardrobe for new clothes, so we took their old clothes off their hands and sold them on. Once sales started coming in and money began to be added into my fundraiser, I felt so much more confident and positive surrounding fundraising and I began to have more and more ideas. I feel like the first £100 is definitely the hardest.

You've recently finished an event, can you tell us a bit about it?

I decided to do a Walk for Water as it was the perfect event for lockdown. I decided to set the challenge of a minimum of 6KM a day (so people knew I was challenging myself) and then to get engagement I decided that with every donation of £5+ I would add an extra KM onto my overall total.

The event forced me to get my daily exercise in, I also got some training in for Kili as I got used to consistently walking a fair distance for a week straight and it raised £135 for my donation fund. It fit in well around my Uni work as it didn’t take much planning, I just had to make sure I kept an eye on donations and posted an update every day. I ended up walking 60K in total over the course of the week, so the hardest bit was definitely how tired I was after the week finished.

Do you have any tips for anyone who is worried/struggling with fundraising?

As I mentioned before, getting the first £100 or £200 is definitely the hardest, I feel as though once you’ve hit that mark it gives you so much more confidence and positivity about fundraising. I would recommend speaking to your parents and other family members to see if the companies or businesses they work for would donate, usually companies tend to make larger donations. I found it very hard to ask friends for donations as I am aware that they are students like me and hence do not have a lot of money to spare, so companies are great to talk to instead.

I would also recommend fundraisers that involve giving a product in return. The clothes drive is working really well as all I had to do was find old clothes and post them online, it is a great, steady form of income that you can have running alongside other events.

What are you most looking forward to in the coming months?

Obviously the climb is the thing I am most excited about and I have a lot of upcoming practice walks in the near future. Hopefully me and a friend are going to do a walking fundraiser and I also have plans to do practice climbs, such as Scafell Pike and Snowdon, in preparation for Kilimanjaro which will be a lot of fun.

Has Jasmine inspired you? Learn about the different ways you can fundraise for and support Dig Deep: www.digdeep.org.uk/get-involved

If you would like to feature in our 'Confessions of a Fundraiser' series then get in touch by dropping us an email (support@digdeep.org.uk)