This World Mental Health Day we’ve been sharing stories from around our services where grassroots fundraising and donations support our mission of Making Mental Health Recovery a Reality and priority.

As one of the leading mental health charities in England, we are grateful to everyone who fundraises for us, both past and present, and your donations really help our work with people we support both locally and regionally.

For example:

A £30 donation can help towards buying art materials for a wellbeing activity

A £200 donation can support a service to buy flowers, bulbs, or other gardening materials to help people we support update a communal garden area

A £1,000 donation can help towards paying for a holiday or adventure activity for the people we support

How can you fundraise for us?

We’ve made fundraising and donating to Richmond Fellowship as easy as possible, so you can fully enjoy the experience of raising money for us.

Our online fundraising and donations portal, managed by Enthuse, is our dedicated site for setting up your own fundraising page for raising money, or giving a simple donation to support our work.

You can share your fundraising page on social media, allowing people to donate to your activity or challenge – ensuring it reaches as bigger audience as possible.

Our Communications and Marketing Team would love to hear about your fundraising experiences so do opt into our email request to contact you when you sign up, if you wish.

Our portal also allows you to make a one off donation, or you can set up a direct debit to allow you to give monthly, with the ability for you can cancel the direct debit at any time. There’s also an option to state which service you’d like your donation to go to.

Gift Aid

Gift Aid can increase the value of your donation at no extra cost to you. Tick the Gift Aid declaration box when making your donation online.

The Government will then contribute an extra 25% on top of your donation. This means for every £1 you donate, we receive £1.25.

What can I do to fundraise?

Our Communications and Marketing Team have compiled some ideas of how you can fundraise for us and what’s worked well for previous fundraisers!

> Signing up for a local charity run, such as a Marathon or 5K
> Organising a sponsored walk with friends and family
> Hosting a bake sale at a community event
> Organising afternoon tea with a competition
> A charity quiz night
> Sponsored to give up a habit for a month – Sober October and No Shave November
> Sweepstake – guess the number in the sweet jar. Everyone that comes along gets to have a go and pay to enter
> Sponsored step count – as a team be sponsored to reach a certain number of steps in a month
> A Halloween themed event – pay £2 to enter. You might already be hosting a Halloween event this year, why not try to raise some money too? You could host a quiz? Everyone can come along dressed in their best Halloween costume!

Fundraising success stories!

Here are some examples of how your fundraising has helped our services:

> Tameside Lakes Challenge – supported by the National Lottery
> Sudbury Supported Housing service in Suffolk – fundraising at the Sudbury Fun Run
> Castle Young People Supported Housing service in Cambridge – fundraising at the Northstowe Running Festival

To fundraise or donate to Richmond Fellowship, click here.