It’s been a while since I posted an update on fund-raising, so below is a chart showing our progress up to May. The fund to May stands at a fantastic £46,607 – almost half-way to our target. The last six months alone have brought in nearly £13,000.

Thanks to everyone for their fantastic support. We’ll be taking a break over the summer, but will be planning more activity for the Autumn term.

Thanks very much to Booker Tate for their recent generous donation to St Joseph’s Thame Building Fund.

The business is “a global leader in the provision of investment, management and development services to the world of sugar, ethanol, bio-energy and other agribusiness projects”.

They are based in Church Road in Thame, and it’s great to have support from a local business.

I blogged a few weeks ago about the Waitrose Community Matters scheme, which is now running in the Thame store.

I’m very pleased to say that, thanks to everyone’s support (and their green tokens), Waitrose has made a donation of £320 to St Joseph’s Building Fund.

Thanks to Waitrose in Thame for selecting us to be one of the beneficiaries.

I blogged a few weeks ago about the Waitrose Community Matters scheme.  I’m very pleased to say that St Joseph’s Building Fund has ben chosen this month as one of the beneficiaries.

As you may remember, each month the Thame Waitrose chooses three local causes to support. Each time you shop you get a small green token, which you can put in the box to support your chosen cause. At the end of the month Waitrose divide £1000 between the three causes – proportionate to the number of tokens they each receive.

So, every time you shop in Waitrose this month, remember to get a token and remember to support St Joseph’s Thame!

Originally uploaded by a shadow of my future self

Yesterday was St Joseph’s Thame annual Christmas Fete, and the Friends of St Joseph’s were kind enough to give the Building Fund space for a stall.

We decided to run a tombola, and at one point were nearly overrun with customers. Partly this was due to the high quality of the prizes which had been donated (thank you very much to everyone who contributed). Partly I think this is due to the attraction of a tombola.

According to dictionary.com, ‘tombola’ comes from the Italian ‘to tumble or fall’, which is a reference to the fact that the tickets are usually held in a rotating drum.

We decided to give our tombola a twist, with numbered balls (a la Lotto) hidden in a barrel. For £2 you could pick out five balls, and if the number on any ball ended in ‘0′ or ‘5′ you won a prize. The odds of winning a prize are pretty good (roughly one prize for every turn), so everyone went home happy.

Thanks to everyone’s support and generosity we managed to raise nearly £200 for the Building Fund.

Christmas Shopping
Originally uploaded by
andreasnilsson1976

It’s been a while since I blogged about Easyfundraising, so here’s a quick reminder about this great service. Easyfundraising carries links to all the major online retailers (Amazon, eBay, Tesco, Argos to name but a few). If you want to make a purchase online, then remember to go to Easyfundraising first, then click on the retailer where you want to shop.

Easyfundraising will collect a small percentage of your spend from the retailer (not from you!) and pass it on to St Joseph’s Building Fund.

Since we started using this service over a year ago we’ve raised more than £600 of valuable funds. And our biggest months were around Christmas when lots of people were obviously shopping online.

If you haven’t registered for this service then click on the link to go directly to the St Joseph’s Building Fund page.

In addition, to make things even more worthwhile, Easyfundraising have recently launched a new service called Pricechecker. In their own words:

Price Checker lets you compare thousands of products and prices from easyfundraising retailers and narrow your search by price and category, as well as seeing delivery options and donation amounts. When you have selected the deal that suits you best, click on the retailer link to visit their site and purchase your product. Your purchase will then generate a donation for your chosen cause.

Which means that not only can you save yourself money, but you can also maximise the donation to St Joseph’s Building Fund.

Happy shopping!

Originally uploaded by Chris_J

This week sees the launch of St Joseph’s Building Fund Christmas Card Campaign. We realise that Christmas seems a long time away, but many businesses start their planning early in the year. According the The Guardian:

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) estimates that 1 billion Christmas cards – 17 for every woman, man and child – end up in bins across the UK each Christmas.

Many businesses are now considering alternatives to the traditional printed card, such as e-mails or e-cards. This approach can help realise significant economies for the business, not to mention the benefits to the environment. In recognition of the savings on printing and postage many businesses make a charitable donation – a great way to demonstrate a community commitment at Christmas.

The website Envirowise offers a valuable government-funded programme of free, confidential environmental advice to UK businesses. This year they’re offering a free e-card service, so that UK businesses can do their bit to help reduce this waste by sending Envirowise e-cards to colleagues, business contacts, friends and family – and demonstrate corporate responsibility at the same time. Last year Envirowise subscribers sent more than 60,000 e-cards – saving over a tonne of paper, not to mention the energy and transport costs.

This Christmas St Joseph’s Building Fund is asking local businesses in Thame to consider making it a ‘green’ Christmas for their clients, customers and staff, and at the same time help a local charity. If you are connected with a local business and would like to help out, then please e-mail us at stjosephsfund@googlemail.com.

Check back here often for updates on our campaign.

Through the people at ChipIn I found this great little utility called ‘Sprout’. Sprout is an online tool that allows you to build your own ‘widgets’ (little interactive badges that can appear on any website).

Fairly quickly I was able to build a widget for St Joseph’s Building Fund, which tells our story in an engaging and interesting way. And, best of all, readers can share the widget with their own friends and family, or post it on their own websites, or community spaces (such as Facebook). Just click on the ‘Share’ link at the bottom of the widget.

Enjoy, and let me know what you think.

Originally uploaded by alalsacienne

Waitrose in Thame has recently launched its ‘Community Matters’ scheme.

The scheme is simple. Each month, the shop divides £1,000 between three local organisations- such as community groups or schools. The shop’s customers nominate which organisations can benefit from the scheme. Customers are offered a token every time they shop, which can be inserted in one of three Perspex tubes – one for each organisation. At the end of the month the tokens for each organisation are weighed and the beneficiaries receive a proportion of the cash.

The first three charities in the Thame scheme are a local nursery, a playground project and the local museum. Needless to say we will also be nominating St Joseph’s Building Fund as a potential beneficiary.

The Waitrose scheme seems like a great idea to me – it’s part of a national programme – as it generates much-needed funds for local organisations, influenced directly by the people affected (not to mention the additional positive publicity for Waitrose).

According to the manager of another Waitrose: ‘Our customers love it, and it’s raised our profile locally.’

Originally uploaded by Rogue Soul

The beginning of the school year seemed to be a good time to give an update on our fundraising progress – and the results are extremely good.

Easyfundraising
First of all, an update on the funds we’ve raised through Easyfundraising – remember this is a free service that makes a donation every time you shop online. Just visit Easyfundraising first. Since we launched this service last year, you’ve helped raise over £520 – just by clicking! The details are as follows:

Overall
Overall, we’re now well ahead of our plan for the year. Our total funds raised in 2008 are £11,282 to the end of July, compared with our target of £8,413 (an over-performance of 34%). Cumulatively our total fund now stands at £30,086 – 11% ahead of our target.

Our goal for this term is to raise a further £7,000, and there are lots of plans developing to help us do just that – watch this space.

As ever, thanks very much to everyone who has supported us, and made a contribution to our fantastic total – we really couldn’t do it without you!