Virtual Fundraising Ideas

Ideas and inspiration

• Everyday Fundraising
  • Sponsored haircut – Are you missing the hair dressers? Get sponsored to chop your locks or go for a full head shave. Last year, Millie raised almost £600 by cutting 16 inches off!
  • £2 Tuesday – Put a jar somewhere visible, and get your family to put £2 into it every Tuesday. If you have a family of four, this would raise £416 in a year, which would cover the cost of two Willen at Home nurses visiting patients in the community for a whole day.
  • Willen Wednesday – Do something wacky every Wednesday, like fancy dress for your Zoom meetings or daily run, or attempt to master a different skill in 24 hours.
  • Donate your commute or daily coffee – If you’re saving money by working from home, then why not donate the cost of your commute, or what you would have spent on a coffee every day?
  • Puzzle-a-thon – If you need something to keep you occupied, then why not challenge yourself to complete as many puzzle’s as possible? This can be over a week or a month, whatever works with your schedule.
  • Movie Marathon – Set yourself the task of watching every DVD you own, or all the films on Netflix in just 30 days. Get your friends involved and start a Movie club.
  • Set up a Facebook Birthday Fundraiser  – If you don’t feel like you need any presents or cards, then you can ask people to donate to your birthday fundraiser instead. It’s easy to do here, but Facebook usually gives you a prompt just before your birthday.
  • Sign up to Amazon Smile – Support Willen Hospice when you shop on Amazon without any extra cost to you. See how to set it up here.
  • Check out our Amazon Wishlist – Kindly set up by volunteer group, Comfort items for Willen Hospice, you can purchase something from the list to help us support and comfort the patients and families in our care.
  • eBay for charity – Did you know you can raise money for us by selling on eBay? Read this handy step-by-step guide.
  • Everyclick – Fundraise just by online window shopping! Everyclick works by partnering up with retailers and getting commission for everyone who visits their online shops via the Give as you Live page (part of EveryClick). The commission is then donated to your chosen charity. It’s free to sign up, and so far we’ve raised over £700 with this super initiative.

   

   

• Physical Challenges
  • Garden Marathon – Run, jog, hop, spacehopper, stiltwalk or crawl around your garden – set a challenge for yourself (e.g. run a marathon, walk the equivalent distance of walking to London, hop to the shop)
  • Walk a Marathon – if you don’t want to run it, why not walk it!
  • Couch to 5K – A popular choice for new runners who are not sure where to start. Stay motivated by getting sponsorship from you friends and family.
  • 5k Every day – already a runner? Challenge yourself to run 5K every day for a whole week or month.
  • Sponsored dog walk – Vicki and her Labrador, Marvin walked 14 miles over three days! Could you do something similar with your furry friend?
  • Push-ups, Squats, Lunges – How many can you do?
  • Stepathon – Use your activity tracker watch to challenge yourself to a number of steps and use your daily walk to push your limits. Share your progress online to boost donations.
  • Stair Summit – Summit famous mountains by going up and down your stairs. Do it yourself or work as a team. Here’s a useful guide to give you an idea of how many steps you’d need to do…
  • Cyclethon – If your daily exercise is cycling, can you virtually get from Lands End to John O’Groats?
  • Tough Mudder – Create your own obstacle course in the garden using whatever you can find – climb over a wheelbarrow, crawl under a sheet, jump over a deckchair. Remember Health and Safety!
  • The Parks Trust 25 Mile Circular Walk – Get up and out early in the morning to discover new areas of MK on this epic walk.
  • Wheelchair Marathon – ‘Wheely Grant’ raised over £4,000 during lockdown 1.0 by completing 7 incremental wheelchair marathons in 100 days. Could you do something similar?

  Want a medal for your achievements?

  There are lots of different challenges you can pay to do, and in return you’ll receive useful resources to help with your challenge and your very own medal at the end. Just let us know when you’ve signed up by emailing challenges@willen-hospice.org.uk and we’ll help you with your fundraising.

  • Virtual MK Marathon – 26 April – 8 May 2021. If you don’t fancy taking part in the live event on 1 – 3 May, you can choose from five different distances in the Virtual MK Marathon.
  • Race at your Pace – Walk, run, cycle, swim, you pick the distance.
  • Walk 1000 miles in 2021 – Get outside and enjoy all four seasons with this year long challenge.
  • The Conqueror Virtual Fitness Challenges – Arguably some of the best medals in the business, from The Inca Trail in Peru, to the iconic Route 66, complete this unique challenges from your front door.
• Family, friends and fundraising via Zoom
  •  Scavenger Hunt – This is great fun for children to take part in. Get everyone together on Zoom and announce objects – the first person the find and hold it up to the camera gets a point. Here are some ideas for items to hunt for: postage stamp, specific coin, photo of a celebrity, toilet roll tube, ketchup, toothbrush, corkscrew, book, ice cube, CD, rice, grass, pencil sharpener, soft toy, sock, phone charger, plant, sunglasses, pet, jigsaw piece, remote control.
  • Virtual House Party – Get together with family and friends on Zoom with a virtual night out. Have a nominated DJ to stream the music, set yourselves a theme and get dressed up. You could have an eighties theme, a vintage rock ‘n’ roll night, Ibiza rave or a cheesy pub disco.
  • Lockdown Bingo Night – If you have a toy bingo machine, you can host a bingo game on Zoom – generate bingo cards for your players for free here. Either generate one bingo card per page and email them out separately or send the whole PDF and let players know which page to print out/use.
  • Virtual Quiz – We say bring back the lockdown quizzes! You can host your own virtual quiz online using Zoom (which is free for up to 100 players but has a 45 minute time limit for free users), Facebook Live or YouTube Live. You can have tricky questions on geography, history or science, or make it more fun with showbiz, movies and music rounds. You can include audio, video and picture questions if you prepare your quiz on PowerPoint, then just share your computer screen for the visual questions. Raise money by charging players to take part or ask for a charity donation – you can include a donation button on Facebook.
• Arts, crafts and baking
  • Set up an online shop, or sell via social media – If you’re a talented knitted, crochet-queen, or felt-needling extraordinaire, why not sell your home-made goods and donate the money to Willen Hospice?
  • Learn a new craft – Challenge yourself to learn a new crafty hobby like knitting or sewing, and get sponsored by friends and family to master it. If you get really good you could try to knit the world’s longest scarf and ask for a £5 donation for every metre. There are lots of beginner kits available to order online that come with instructions and all the tools and materials you need to get started.
    
  • Plant sale – If you’ve got into gardening since lockdown 1.0, then you can easily harvest seeds and clippings to sell via social media, or outside your house with an honesty box.
  • Virtual Masterclass – Could you give online classes in something you’re good at for your friends and colleagues? Photography, cookery, pottery, computers. Or invite an expert to host a Zoom tutorial for your team – e.g. a beauty therapist could host a makeup tutorial or a baker could show people how to decorate a cake.
  • Virtual Artwork  -This works brilliantly on Zoom if you have artistic friends. Set up a camera on your subject (a bowl of fruit, a landscape or a live model), and give everyone a time limit to recreate the image in their chosen medium – as a painting, pencil drawing or even crayons. At the end, everyone uploads their masterpiece and there’s a prize for the winner.
  • Virtual Bakeoff/Masterchef – This is a great fundraiser that works really well for a team or group of friends. You can set a ‘signature bake’ or ‘technical challenge’ where everyone has to make the same thing and appoint a judge to pick the winner. Who will make the best swiss roll, cinnamon bun or cherry bakewell? Or why not throw down the gauntlet for a ‘show-stopper’ with or without a theme, and let your fellow bakers impress with their skills.