An important objective of our Festival is to raise money for a local charity, and, so far, we have enjoyed partnerships with Helen & Douglas House, Seesaw, Footsteps, SpecialEffect! PACT, Sue Ryder Nettlebed, Style Acre, Daybreak and Restore raising over £300,000. In 2024 the charity share of our profit was over £33,000 .
We share half of our profits with the Festival charity and in return they help us to promote the Festival to their supporters, supply volunteers to sell raffle tickets through the week and find some abseilers, auction prizes, events or perhaps famous faces that they have contact with.
Here are the criteria we use to choose our charity. They must:
- be local;
- be large enough to help – patrons/prizes/sponsorship/events
- be small enough to care (an annual fundraising target of about £100,000);
- directly deliver, not through a third party;
- be easy to explain to people;
- people based;
- already have a big group of volunteers that they mobilise for events.
If you would like to apply to be our charity in the future, please do contact us using the email address in the footer. We would love to hear from you!
We usually start to look at charity applications about 1 year before the next Festival and aim to make a decision in July the year before
Activity that needs time:
– Organise a week long raffle (50? Volunteer slots depending on how many events you decide to sell at)
– Find a speaker and fundraising support for the opening night party / ball
– Find raffle prizes / auction prizes (joint responsibility with Festival)
– 5 x 6 weekly meetings Sept – May
– Contact potential event sponsors /performers / abeseilers / contacts (joint responsibility with Festival)
– Joint preparation of press releases
– Write material about your charity for the programme & website
– Social media Twitter / facebook to supplement what we do
– Create additional marketing material for your charity to create a presence at the Festival (banners / booklets?)
– Find volunteers (4) and cake (10 + scones) to run the Abbey tea room for 1 afternoon
Sharing expertise / part of day to day business
– Publicise to your distribution list
– Publicise on your website / newsletters
– Advise us on marketing & social media advice (if you have marketing experts!)
– Share media contacts
You ideally have most of the following:
- some dedicated fundraising and communications resources
- a team of fundraising volunteers
- a track record of organising your own fundraising events
- an active presence on social media