COLLECTING SPONSORSHIP MONIES
BE READY TO COLLECT IN THE MONEY!
A little bit of planning in readiness for collecting your sponsorship will save you a huge amount of time and effort after the race and will undoubtedly raise your fundraising total - the sooner you collect, the more you will collect! Here are a few suggestions:
- Ask your sponsors to tick the Gift Aid declaration box when they make their pledge (this is explained clearly in the separate section called Gift Aid).
- Where possible, try collecting the money as you go along. You can collect cash or cheques.
- Cheques can be made payable to you, but you will need to issue a cheque made payable to CHILDREN with LEUKAEMIA. It may therefore be easier to ask for cheques to be made payable to the Charity from the outset; in some instances, sponsors prefer to make their cheques payable to the Charity.
- If you collect cash, it would be very helpful if you could issue your own cheque to us.
- Sponsorship funds can be submitted to the charity before the race if you would prefer. We will bank any sponsorship money we receive immediately and, of course, will keep you advised of your running total.
- If you do send donations in early, it is important to mark them on your Sponsorship Form with the date you sent them in to us and to tell us who the sponsorship is from - particularly if you are forwarding your own personal cheque to us.
- You can accept credit card payments on our Individual Sponsorship Forms. Simply fill out the credit card details on the form and we will do the rest. It is recommended that these are forwarded to the Charity to be processed immediately to reduce problems with expiry dates. Please remember that these sponsors should not be replicated on your main sponsorship form.
- Post dated cheques are acceptable and allow you to promise they won't be cashed if disaster strikes and you can't compete. (Although many people will be happy to make their donation, irrespective of whether or not you finish the race!)
- Build up a mailing list as you collect pledges. You'll want to write to all your supporters once you have completed the race to thank them - and they'll want to know how you got on. If you have a computer it's an easy task to create an address list but if you don't have a computer, you could write out address labels as you go along. You can then photocopy these sheets of labels to keep as a record. Ben or Claire will be happy to help with a 'standard' letter for you to top and tail.
- Keep your sponsorship forms safe! We need them all at the end of the day in order to make our Gift Aid claims.
IN CONCLUSION...
Please send in monies whenever is convenient for you. We will acknowledge you every time we bank monies on your behalf, and will advise you of your updated running total.
Don't forget - extra supplies of sponsorship forms, posters and A4 paper are only a phone call away.
Don't hesitate to call if you have any queries. We have years of experience of supporting runners and are here to help you.
Don't give in - persistence really does bring results!
