So – if you thought our wonderful active networks were all about the thrill and excitement of big actions and taking on the bad guys you’d be sooo wrong!
Well, you’d be right in that they are about that, BUT in the spare 5 minutes they get between their own lives and all the time they commit to Greenpeace campaigns, actions, general malarkey with Barbie dolls and Darth Vader style costumes they also manage to raise us serious amounts of money and I was reminded of this on Monday when I received the quarterly email from Syd at Waveney giving me the latest donation from their festivals - for the tally and just to say OMG! Waveney in 2011 raised: £15,455!!!!
These guys live in a small rural community that is not super rich and yet their dedication and thought has raised Greenpeace serious amounts of cash – mostly from simple and humbling activities like making tea and selling cakes!
Now of course Waveney are bloody marvellous as I am sure you’ll all agree but how is everyone else doing?? Well, pretty darn good I have to say (although possibly not yet in the same fundraising league – but then that’s like comparing my running to Paula Radcliffe’s – although admittedly I have never wee’d whilst running the Greek Olympic marathon – although I have never actually run the ….. you get the idea!)
So general figures look like this:
In the 2 and a bit years I have worked with you on community fundraising you have given us £50,000 into the office from all your activities – and that’s without all the lovely sponsoring etc. that you have done using webpages from justgiving etc. – the amount will be much higher but harder to work out who is in a network and who is not! Again this is all from small home scale projects with small numbers of people – selling tea and cakes, flipping pancakes etc.
We have exceeded by quite a bit the £100,000 mark in total for community fundraising with all the activities that people have fundraised for but I wanted to give a particularly big hurrah specifically to you lovely lot – without whom I would be seriously stuck!
Last year you rose to a new challenge and raised over £11,000 for the new Rainbow Warrior - many of you were able to come and see her and I know I thanked a few of you in person - but I was not able to see of all of you. For many this was a new area and you have excelled yourselves....
So to every network out there big and small – thank you from me and from everyone at Greenpeace – we can’t do any of it without you!
I hope we can build on this success and see more of the same in 2012 - you really are the backbone of not just Greenpeace and her campaigning but of community fundraising - you are my community!
Thank you!
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