Getting sponsorship

Although the amount of money that our hospice needs annually to serve the community continues to rise, so does the number of families in the area who have experience of hospice care. A large proportion of the people you may talk with will be only too glad of the opportunity you are giving them to support the hospice's work. So don't be afraid to ask! Take note of the well-tried practical tips below.

To get people to sponsor you without tackling them face to face, set up a Justgiving web page and send them e-mails, letters, text messages, etc., encouraging them to visit it. This is a very efficient way of raising sponsorship. Apart from setting up and telling people about your page, you don't have to do anything. It doesn't cost you or the hospice anything, and the money is transferred promptly.

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Some practical tips

• Always carry a Sponsor Form with you. You can download it as a .pdf file.
• The secret is to be politely cheeky and ask everyone and anyone at every opportunity.
• Make a list of all your social circles, peer groups; etc; family, friends, sports club, school (including PTAs), work colleagues, clients etc. Then list individuals in each group.
• Develop a team of recruiting sergeants among family, friends and colleagues to fan out bearing copies of your sponsor form.
• If possible collect from people as they sign, especially if you don’t see them on a regular basis. And do please ask them to tick the Gift Aided box (if they are a UK taxpayer) – a further 28% on everybody’s sponsor money makes all the difference to the hospice.
• If you are in business, or have contacts in businesses, focus on board rooms and managers with access to budgets. Have a word with your boss, often companies will match money you raise, pound for pound.
• ‘Cold calling’ of businesses where you are not known rarely produces results, but where you have an ‘in’, use it to solicit corporate sponsorship.
• Consider the benefits of a media release. If you work for a company or any institution/organisation which publishes a newsletter, or other internal communication, try and get an article into that as early as possible. Or often resident’s associations and churches produce a newsletter. These and posters on club noticeboards etc. are all means for getting wider coverage.
• Make sure you are very clear what you are collecting for: St. Luke’s Hospice is the local hospice for the population of Harrow and Northern Brent. The benefits to the local community of being able to offer a complete service of palliative and hospice care are widely recognised. Annual operating costs of the hospice are estimated at over £3 million – your support in raising sponsorship will enable us to ensure the continuation of this vital service. The money raised by each of our annual walks has funded the year's drugs bill for the hospice. The hospice main website can provide you with plenty more information.

• Several walkers successfully target the residents of the roads where they live. A week before the walk, deliver a signed letter and sponsor form in an envelope adressed to "Residents of xyz Road". A sample letter can be downloaded.

  Then, after the walk, proudly bearing your mileage certificate and a pack of sponsor forms, knock on everyone's door, saying something like "You'll remember a letter when I said I was going to do a sponsored walk for St Luke's Hospice. Well, I've done it now, and I wondered if you would like to make a sponsorship donation." You'll get some refusals, but you'll be amazed how generous most people are.

  Get the resident's name, house number and postcode, and confirm that he/she is a UK taxpayer. If so, tick the Gift Aided box. When you can assess your total, either drop a thank-you note in to those who donated or put up a notice in the road, remembering to clear it away after a couple of weeks.