Fundraising hints and tips

Fundraise to help us keep hearts beating.

Fundraising takes determination, creativity and enthusiasm. That’s why we've put together tips and ideas to inspire you and help you get started.

Have a goal | Decide what to do | At work | Tell people | Online | Friends | Matched giving | Gift Aid

Have a goal

Setting yourself a fundraising target helps you plan. Think about how much you want to raise and when you want to raise it by. Be ambitious.

Decide on what you want to do

Your idea can be as big or small as you want. Be creative!

Here are some ideas to inspire you:

• Host a dinner party or a barbeque and ask for donations from guests.
• Organise a swimathon, aerobathon, sponsored silence or even beard shaving.
• Organising a sports day is a great way to get pulses racing.
• Hold a quiz night and get teams to enter and drum up some competition!
• Organise an evening event, such as a dinner dance, barn dance or black tie ball.
• Hold a cricket match or 5-a-side football tournament and charge for entry and post-match refreshments.
• Arrange a book swap – everyone brings an old book to donate and takes away a new one for a small donation.

If you’re fundraising at work:

• Organise a cake sale and ask everyone to donate £2.
• Start a swear box.
• Organise a dress down day or a fancy dress day and get everyone to donate a £5.
• Run a sweepstake for big sporting events like Wimbledon, or if you’re taking part in one of our events, get your colleagues to guess the time you complete your event in.
• Hold a cricket match or 5-a-side football tournament. You could put staff, clients or departments against each other!

Tell people why you’re raising money for us

Whatever you do, tell people why you’re raising money for us and how every pound is vital to our research in the fight for every heartbeat.

Create an online fundraising page

Make sure you create an online fundraising page for your event. It’s the easiest way to get everyone to sponsor you. You can share it on Facebook and Twitter too.

Ask friends and family

Ask your closest friends and family to sponsor you first. They’re likely to give more generously and set the trend for other donations.

Find out about Matched Giving

Many companies have budgets for matching their employees' fundraising efforts, so find out if your employer does Matched Giving.

Make your fundraising go further with Gift Aid

Always ask your sponsors to Gift Aid their donation if they are UK tax payers. This means that we receive an extra 25p for every £1 donated and it doesn’t cost you or your sponsors any extra.