Some thoughts on fundraising

OK haven't figured the Blog out yet, but have created a report on our meeting attendance. I sent it to Parslow so he can review and make appropriate adjustments. Chris, can you help us getting it on the site?


I also did some work on the fund raising. I checked if we need to register as a charity, but I think this is not necessary:

http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/publications/cc21.asp

Appeals for funds

24. Fund-raising is not a charitable object in itself: it is simply an activity which can be undertaken to help achieve a charitable purpose. If a charity wants to raise money to carry out work which is not covered by the existing objects of the charity, it can create a new charity with specific purposes. Please contact us if you have any doubts about whether your proposed fund-raising purposes are authorised by the objects of your charity.

25. There are complex rules about fund-raising and you may need to take professional advice on this. We offer advice in Charities and Fund-raising (CC20). We recommend you read this and consider the following points of good practice.

§ Great care should be taken over the wording of a written appeal when asking for money from the public. We recommend that you make sure the purposes for which the charity intends to use the money are accurately described.

§ The record of a speech or broadcast may be regarded as evidence of the purposes of an appeal. The organisers of that appeal cannot alter the purposes of the appeal to something which is not consistent with the terms under which donors were invited to contribute. We recommend that care be given to the wording of any spoken appeal.

§ If you want to raise money for the general purposes of an existing charity, you must make this clear and avoid any suggestion that the money will be used for a more specific purpose.

§ If an appeal is for a specific purpose, such as paying for or restoring a building, we recommend that it states what will happen to the money if either not enough, or too much, is raised.

So assuming my conclusion is correct we need now really need to get in raising mode. I would like to get to a point where we raise enough money that allows us to fund the trip as well as donate at least 2,500 GBP to the two or three causes we select. (See my report that will be sent later)



Right now these are the concepts we have come up with:



1) Begging. We should be able to get at least 700 GBP by some good ol’ begging. Jesse already managed to get some sort of commitment from the AlliedClans gaming clan. Chris has his employer committed on doubling a certain raised amount and Parslow and I are speaking to Forrester to have the London office give up the Friday drinks and maybe lunch budget.

2) Promoting Stan tourism. I will write letters to the Official Tourism Boards of the several Stans we’re planning to hit. The idea is that we demonstrate how safe the individual countries are for tourists by traveling through them depending solely on the hospitality (not hostility) of the Stan inhabitants. Next to the military escort we should be able to negotiate at least 1 Ruble per kilometer we manage to travel unharmed through the respective countries. We could raise 6000 KM * 1 Ruble 6000 Ruble, which is 125 GBP… OK this may be not such a good idea, but with the help of David Metcalfe’s negotiating tactics we could get this up to 1250 GBP, which should cover 2 Cows.

3) Online Betting. We could provide an online betting service which allows people from around the world o bet on different categories such as: Who will die first? How far will they get? When will the car first break down? How much bribe money is required? Etc… We will donate 25% of the bets to charity…

4) SUN Article. AP told me that the Sun has a weekly article on Man with the Van. It’s about some local lowlife and his white van. We may be able to convince them to pay us for a hilarious article…

5) Stupid TV show. This is my favorite one. The idea is quite simple: We get two cameras and we cover the whole trip to Mongolia on video. This will result in enough material that allows any editor to create a 12 * 25 minutes series. It’s something along the lines of The Trip from MTV in NL. I spoke to one of my friends (Onno) who has some contacts with MTV and I had a quick chat with him. He suggested to write several production houses to see if they have any apatite for this. I will draft a letter tomorrow and hopefully we can send letters by the end of this week. This should get us enough cash to fund this insane trip. I’m speaking to Onno later this week, to see what he can do to help. Jilali: I know you bailed, but I believe you also have some contacts that may be useful here. Is there anything you can do to help?



Ok, this is it for now, but will tune in soon again…



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