Fundraising Idea: Christmas Grid

Where did Santa lose his presents?

A great way to raise money is by creating a grid on a piece of A4 paper and ask people to donate a pound and sign up to a square on the grid. You can theme the grid to anything, but a great way to theme the grid at Christmas could be:

• Help Santa find Rudolph: Santa lost Rudolph the night before Christmas Eve somewhere in Greenland and needs your help to find him!
• Help the Elves find their lost toys: The Elves have lost a sack of toys and Santa needs to take them on his sleigh, where do you think they left them?
• Help Santa find his sleigh: the Elves have been mischievous and hidden the sleigh from Santa, where do you think they have hidden it?

How?

1. Create a table on your computer with upwards of 49 squares (7 by 7 in a table) on a poster, but be careful not to have too many squares as you want all or most of them to be filled up. Check out our example here.

2. Once you have created your table, created a theme for your poster and provide information about VESL, information about your project and your contact details in case any one wants to get in touch with you.

3. Decide on a prize, this could be anything from a big box of chocolates, a mini homemade hamper to a cuddly (reindeer) bear, make sure you include what the prize is on your poster.

4. Approach local retailers and pubs and explain about your project, ask if you can put your poster up in their pub and if they can collect donations on your behalf for a specified amount of time. Leave the prize with them too if you can so people can see what it is and it will draw more attention than a piece of paper on the wall. Ask the owner/staff to get people to write their name and a contact number is each box.

5. After a couple of weeks go back to the pubs/retailers and pull a number (from 1 to how many grids in your table) out of a hat at the location, ring the person in the relevant square and tell them to collect their prize!

If you manage to get a couple of local retailers to agree to putting up the posters you could easily raise £100-£150 with minimal effort!

You can also do a non Christmas themed grid at a different time of year, for example a lottery grid where you number all the boxes and people have to guess the bonus ball for a certain weeks Lottery draw.