Syria Raffle Blog: Day One - £214

Decided to pop a few thoughts down every day til the JustGiving page gets to £10,000. Who am I kidding – course I won’t keep it up. But given that this is the first time in my life I’ve tried to raise money for anything other than my own shoe fund, it might be amusing to see some of the mistakes I make as I attempt to drum up the dosh. I’m sure there are all sorts of tried and tested fundraisers’ tricks to milking people for money (since I had kids I’m a sap for quite a few of them) but as I’ve got just a few minutes each day to source prizes and inviegle people into coughing up, I rather suspect I won’t be following the handbook.

First possible mistake  – was it a terrible idea to do a raffle? Of course I didn’t check the tax rules before deciding to ask for prizes, and at the last minute discovered that you can't buy a raffle ticket and allow the charity to reclaim Gift Aid on your money. 

On discovering this I hit the ‘edit’ button on the JustGiving page and wrote a bit of blurb explaining that it was a raffle fundraiser and there were all these fab prizes on offer, then added a P.S. to the effect that if you wanted to Gift Aid your donation you could opt out of the raffle. I didn’t think everyone would… but turns out that all the amazing people who have donated so far have Gift Aided their money.  Which means, if everyone else follows suit, that there will be a lot of verrrrrrrry nice stuff going begging. Hmm. What to do? Maybe I get the £250 haircut? It’s a bit of a dilemma. I’d love to know just how good a £250 haircut is...

The upshot of all this, however, is that I want to say to anyone who donates: the very fact that you’re giving is fantastic. For years and years I didn’t give a single penny to any cause, and was all “please, I work for a charity, that’s my contribution.” (I’m not referring to The Guardian here; I actually did work for charities). Honestly, I was such a selfish idiot. So please, don’t feel guilty about entering the raffle. This whole shebang has been designed as a raffle and you know, ravishing though I hope I’d look with a stonkingly expensive haircut, me nabbing the prizes isn’t quite in the spirit of the project. So, please donate, but please do also feel just as good about your donation when you tick "yes" to the bit about "have you given money in exchange for a raffle ticket".

To bring this bang up to date: we’re just over 24 hours since launch, and friends who I love dearly, people I know professionally and individuals who I don’t know at all have already given £214 – I'm so grateful and touched that you've cared enough to do that. 

Under JustGiving’s system, the money goes directly to Hand in Hand for Syria to buy drugs and medical equipment to help people who are being terribly injured every day. 

There are children, women and men who will live because of it.