Tuesday 29 May 2012

Social experiment anyone?

Just how much difference could Colchester people make to Colchester charities simply by co-ordinating effort? This was something I wondered as I shopped online using www.easyfundraising.org.uk and realised that I'd raised around £40 on my home account and a similar amount on my work account.
I'd chosen 2 different charities and both of them had around 5 supporters.
Not a lot of cash for them then. But it had cost me nothing to do.
So what would happen if a group of people, let's say Colcestrians decided to all use the same fundraising website and support the same charity? Possibly for a month at a time so that everybody's chosen charity got a turn at being supported by the whole group.
So the only change in habit would be to go to the fundraising page before making a purchase so that a percentage of sale is donated by the retailer to the charity.
Possible common retailers include amazon, premier inn, jessops, trainline, moo business cards but there are hundreds of others covering just about everything we might buy.
At the moment there doesn't seem to be a team group facility on easyfundraising so maybe we could simply post in comments below our names or tweet them, I'm @nneerraakk
It wouldn't be fair for me to choose the first charity so maybe someone else can take first comment below to add their charity of choice. The only thing I would ask is that since I'm trying to see how this works in a limited area the charity has a CO postcode registered office.
As soon as the first comment is in I will switch my account over to that charity changing to the next one on the comments list on the first of each month. I will also tweet on the first of each month using #colchesterfundraisers to let everyone know what that month's charity is.
Fingers crossed this will snowball and we'll end up with loads of funds raised for local issues.
Any questions post them in the comments below and if possible let me know on twitter that it's there.
Good luck, Colchester, let's see how we do :)
Anyone care to be first with their charity?