Fundraising Idea: Non-Uniform Day/Dress Down Day

An easy way to raise a couple of hundred pounds!

“It felt great to go back to my old School, they were more than happy to help out and I raised almost £300 in one day!!!” James Hallworth, Student Leader, Thailand, 2012

Why do a non-uniform day?

This event gives you the opportunity of raising quite a lot of money without taking up much of your time, it is easy to set up and is fun for the people involved! Fundraising can sometimes feel like you are always asking the same people for money, so use this as an opportunity to widen the number of people you are asking!

How?

Time to get the fancy dress box out!

There are a couple of ways of doing this:

1. At your current place of work – run a dress down day, fancy dress day or get people to dress in the theme of the country you are volunteering in. Ask permission from your boss to do this for just one day, and ask if you can get an e-mail sent around to all staff advertising it, charge £1 for all the people who participate. You could also put some posters up around the office reminding people.
2. Through your old primary school, secondary school and/or college – get in contact with your old headteacher and explain the project you are going to be a part of and see if they will run a non school uniform day to help you raise money. Make sure you offer something in return, for example to go in and talk in an assembly, run part of a class etc. If there are 500 students at the school you can easily raise £500, getting you way on your way to meeting your fundraising target!! If you contacted both your primary and secondary school, you could practically meet your target!
3. Nearby schools & colleges – If you don’t live near your old school(s) you could always get in touch with your local school and ask for their support in return for you talking about the project in school. This will give you some great practice for when you are overseas too!! You could also try nurseries or pre-schools.
4. Create a ‘xx day’ – you may have seen recently that Save The Children created a Christmas Jumper day on the 12th December. Create a day at you university or work place – the day of the onesie, the day of the morph suit, etc and ask people to donate for wearing the item or donate not to wear the item!

What do I need to do to prepare?

• Make sure it is well advertised, get some posters printed out that you can distribute at work/school.
• Know how you are going to collect the money, if it is in the workplace you can make a little donations pot, if it is at a school discuss with the headteacher the best way of collecting the money.
• If you are running a non-school-uniform event and doing at presentation a the school, make sure you prepare a speech and/or presentation, you can use information and images off our website.
• Make the most out of your event – is there anything you could do on the same day to raise some extra money? If you are running it at your work place, why not bake some cakes and pop them in the staff kitchen and ask for donations. Remember to make the most of every fundraising opportunity you have!!