Such good fundraising (From Bucks Free Press)

Such good fundraising

8:56pm Friday 27th March 2009

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WHEN I was asked to run in the London Marathon late last year, it was not the thought of running 26.2 miles or the months of training that really concerned me; I figured that if so many other people could do it each year, it must be possible. I was concerned more about trying to raise the £1500 minimum the charity requests from each participant.

What I didn’t bank on whilst I deliberated was quite how much support I would get and now, after raising my target twice to £10,000, my fundraising stands at £5,700 and the only thing I have to be worried about is getting round the course.

Naturally, my family and friends have been wonderful. Work colleagues both here and abroad have been heart-warmingly generous and complete strangers have left me stunned and speechless.

I started my campaign by setting up my JustGiving web page ( justgiving.com/jamesmorleysmith). Feeling pleased with myself for getting going on the road to fundraising, I decided to create a FaceBook group about my mission and invited all my FaceBook friends to join, and hopefully sponsor. The response from this was great and the money started coming.

A few weeks later, I contacted the Bucks Free Press via email and explained my story. From this came several articles on my son and his condition (see related links) and the opportunity to write this very blog. And of course, the BFP readers were very generous indeed with their sponsorship, notably a £1000 donation from a local family, it was seeing the notification of this on my phone which left me speechless!

The next stroke of luck came after joking with a friend who had joined me on a training run. I asked him if the company he worked for would like to sponsor our team shirts. A few days later, he called me to say that they would. Today I received my shirt courtesy of Geodis, the global logistics provider based in Cressex. They have had 100 shirts printed for use in the London Marathon and many other sporting events throughout the year. This added another £1000 to my total.

My next move came after watching Stephen Fry talk about Twitter, the social networking site, on Jonathan Ross. I decided to take a look at the site, so signed up and played for a few days. It was then I decided to tweet Stephen Fry and ask if he’d be so kind as to share a link to the BFP article on my son with his followers.

To my surprise he did, suggesting people “might like to sponsor this fellow”.

From this came 18,000 views of the Bucks Free Press article in one 24 hour period and hundreds of pounds of additional sponsorship from people all over the globe.

I next intend on writing to some local companies in the hope of still reaching my £10,000 target, a target which would have been laughable to me when I started, but now seems very realistic.

My advice to anyone who is thinking of doing any kind of fundraising is to consider all avenues and never underestimate people’s generosity.

...and while we are on the subject, please sponsor me at www.justgiving.com/jamesmorleysmith.

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At just four months old, my youngest son was diagnosed with a rare eye cancer called retinoblastoma.

I am running the 2009 Flora London Marathon in order to increase awareness of the disease and raise money for the Childhood Eye Cancer Trust.

Please sponsor me at www.justgiving.com/jamesmorleysmith

For more information on retinoblastoma, go to www.chect.org.uk, email info@chect.org.uk, or call 020 7377 5578.