Funding

Once you have an overall fundraising target, you need to think about how to raise the money. There are several ways to do this:

• Selling badges, cards, t-shirts or other merchandise
• Collections, donations and raffles
• Applying for grants or awards
• Organising your own fundraising events

Which route you decide to take depends largely on how much money you have to raise, and how many people you have available to do the work. You may choose to combine several approaches. Some grant-giving bodies are much more likely to help you if you can raise some money yourselves. Letters to local businesses can produce a rich crop of raffle prizes.

  

Applying for grants or awards

This involves writing convincing applications to trusts, local authorities, businesses such as supermarkets, or other organisations such as trade unions or professional fundraising societies. Although this may appear to be the easy option, it can be very time consuming, as you will need to:

• do some initial research to find suitable organisations to apply to
• collect together information about your group and activities for the applications
• prepare budgets

A SAMPLE GRANT APPLICATION is available for download here