How You Can Help

How you can help:

Red Balloon Learner Centres provide children and young people who are missing from education because they are bullied with a safe environment in which to learn and recover from their experience. They receive an individually designed, full-time, academic, pastoral and therapeutic programme. Once they have regained their confidence and are able to cope academically and socially, the students are supported in their return to a mainstream school, entry to further education, or in obtaining employment.

To get you started!

The following ideas can be a good starting point. Before you start though, you might want to get a group of friends together, or even form a fundraising group that could include other people in your community, such as a representative from a local business who could help produce your publicity material, parents who share your interest and motivation for doing this, family members, neighbours! In fact, fundraising can be a great way of bringing a community together. However you do it, Red Balloon is grateful for your support!

Here are some very simple suggestions that you or your fundraising group could chew over and use:

• Cake bakes, raffles, auctions, sponsored runs and walks, are all simple and effective ways of raising money for us
• Ask your work place, school or college to hold a fancy dress day or ask everyone to wear red for £1
• Bring a pound to work day or week
• We all know about Red Nose Day, how about Red Balloon Day!
• Collect red things – and get sponsored for the most you can collect
• Run a sponsored recycling day of anything red and plastic, or red paper!

Just remember to…

…have fun! Fundraising shouldn’t be too arduous and should be a way to bring people together for a good cause. If you’re really serious about what you want to do, get together as a fundraising committee and set out some objectives and targets. Work out who will do what, make a plan and stick to it. Whatever you raise for Red Balloon, the funds go to helping children and young people recover from the damaging effects of bullying.

Useful information for fundraisers

Publicise your event:

Email, office intranet, newsletters, posters, press releases, local radio – all of these will present opportunities to publicise your efforts. You can also create an event on your Facebook page and invite friends to RSVP and also get them to circulate to their friends online as well. It’s a simple and effective way to notify many hundreds of people, if not more!

Many individuals raising money for Red Balloon ask us to put it up on our events section of our website as well. If you want us to feature it, please let us know and give us all the details you can think of. The more detail you share with us, the greater the impact. If you have any posters or photographs, then send them to us.

Red Balloon branded goods:

In order to assist you in your fundraising for us, we may have a selection of branded merchandise available, including t-shirts, posters and collection tins. If your event requires any merchandise please contact us and let us know what you want and we’ll try and help.

Using the Red Balloon name and logo

Please ensure that if you’re raising funds for our Red Balloon you are clear to indicate whom you’re raising funds for and use the appropriate Charity Number and Red Balloon name. All Red Balloons use the one logo and it is available upon request. If there is anything you’re unsure about, then just give us a call and we’ll help.

Make a JustGiving or Virgin Money Page

Lot’s of people want to raise money for charity and use JustGiving. There are alternatives out there such as Virgin Money Giving and if you click the following link, it will explain the options available to you: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/chooseFundraiser.action

JustGiving for example is one of the simplest ways to raise money and be able to track your progress online. All you need to do is to make a page and share it online with your family and friends or colleagues at work.

If you want to support us by making a donation, you can do this by using a credit/debit card from anywhere in the world. JustGiving will then send your donation straight to Red Balloon. They reclaim Gift Aid automatically on our behalf if you are a UK taxpayer and select that option, so please make sure you tick the box if you are a UK taxpayer.

Have you got a Social Networking Profile on Facebook? We do! Red Balloon has a huge following on FB and now also on Twitter. RB – Norwich and North East also have profiles and we are all linked. It’s a great way to publicise your fundraising activity and sending notifications out to friends. You can share your page and this will help attract more donations and support.

Finally

We want you to have fun in your fundraising and for those participating to feel they are contributing to our cause in a valued way. However please remember that we also do not want people to take unnecessary risks that place themselves, others around them watching and anybody involved in the planning of these events, in any jeopardy.

February 2012