As a small charity with no government funding we rely on donations to allow us to continue our work in supporting those affected by Behçet’s.
Many fundraising events that were planned for this year are now unable to go ahead or have been postponed. We completely understand that many of you will have other priorities at the moment, but if you would like to help us out at this unprecedented time, we’ve compiled a list of ways that you could fundraise from the comfort of your home.
Why not challenge yourself whilst at home with one of these ideas?
- A home-baking or cooking challenge – you could try to bake or cook a new recipe each week.
- Grow a beard or moustache.
- Plan to do something special for International Behçet’s Awareness Day on May 20th to raise funds and awareness of Behçet’s. This could be a one-off like dye-ing your hair, a head shave (if you’re very brave!), a creative art challenge or a fitness challenge. Let us know if you are planning something special for the day.
- A running/walking challenge, or some other kind of exercise challenge – Just a few examples could be doing some yoga every day for a month, walking up/down stairs a certain number of times or walking in your back garden – taking inspiration from Captain Tom!
- An art challenge such as drawing or painting something every day for a month, or taking a photo every day.
- A knitting/crochet/sewing/embroidery/other crafty challenge.
- Learn a new fun skill such as origami or juggling.
- Host an online quiz for your friends and family and ask them for a donation to enter.
- If you have young children get them involved with sponsored skipping or silence or even enlist their friends for an online “Build the tallest Lego tower challenge”.
For more ideas and inspiration check out our page of amazing past fundraisers on JustGiving.
It is easy to set up a fundraising page on JustGiving to get your friends and family to sponsor you for an activity, but there are some instructions here if you need help. Setting up an online donation page can encourage additional donations from people that you don’t know personally, or from those who wish to give anonymously.
Don’t forget to let us know if you set up a JustGiving page and we will promote it on our social media for you. Sharing JustGiving pages on social media not only helps to encourage further donations but it also helps to spread greater awareness of Behçet’s amongst the wider public.
We fully understand if you don’t feel able to do any fundraising activities right now. However, if you still would like to support Behçet’s UK during this challenging time, here are a few other ways you can still show us your support (including some that won’t cost anything extra):
- If you’re shopping on Amazon, start shopping through the Amazon Smile website instead and you can donate 0.5% of the net purchase of eligible items to Behçet’s UK at no extra cost to you. Further instructions are available here on our website.
- If you’re online shopping from big brands such as John Lewis, Sainsbury’s, M&S, eBay, Etsy, Debenhams, Next, Asos, and many more, shop through one of these shopping websites and they will give us a small donation every time you shop at no extra cost to you. These websites work by generating commission which is turned into donations for charities like us. You can either shop through Give as you live, Easy Fundraising or The Giving Machine.
- If you have some printer cartridges to recycle, post them to Recycle 4 Charity and they will give us £1 per every wanted cartridge received. You can request free envelopes from the Recycle 4 Charity website so it won’t cost you anything to post them.
- Is it your birthday soon? Why not ask for donations to support Behçet’s UK though Facebook Birthday Fundraising? More information is available here
- Do you want to send a handwritten note to someone during the virus outbreak? We are still selling our merchandise throughout the virus outbreak so you can order some of our photo notecards and then send a cheerful note to someone you are unable to see in person at the moment. A pack of 8 notecards is £6 plus £1.50 delivery. More information and the order form is available here. As well as notecards we have other items of merchandise still available.
- You can still play The Weather Lottery each week, which gives you the chance to win up to £25,000 each week whilst supporting Behçet’s UK at the same time.
- Receiving lots of post at the moment? Hold on to your stamps and send them to our member Malcolm, who kindly sells them to raise donations for us. When cutting out the stamps from the envelopes leave approximately ¼ inch of paper around the stamp. Malcolm also sells first day covers, stamped postcards and any other philatelic material. For details of where to send these please email info@behcetsuk.org
- Not a member of Behçet’s UK yet? Join today for £20 a year and your subscription will help us to continue our vital work in supporting those in the UK affected by the condition. Membership has lots of benefits for you including a patient alert card, access to our members-only Facebook peer support groups, the opportunity to attend future AGMs and Family & Friends’ Days, plus many more. Find out more and sign up here. Membership is available for free to those in receipt of UK benefits or to those under the age of 18.
- Donate online anytime on our website here or send a cheque payable to ‘Behçet’s UK’ to Behçet’s UK, Kemp House, 152-160 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX.
Thank you to all those who are helping to support Behçet’s UK in whatever ways you can during these strange times. If you have any queries about fundraising please email info@behcetsuk.org