Christmas donations to Gardening Leave

[betula]

Well I spoke to Anna today at Gardening leave.

She is so thrilled at us doing this and wants to thank you all.

They want to do there own Willow weaving and they would really like to be able to buy willow cuttings of 12 different varieties.

After they have planted the cuttings they want to purchase some Mipex ? ground cover/weed suppressant.

Anna would like to send up pictures of the project as it goes along.

So that is their main wish and it will be lovely to see the pictures of a project we have funded so no need to vote folks LOL  ;D

[betula]

[Flighty]

Betula that was a good idea to talk with them.  I'm somewhat relieved that we don't have to vote again, not that I did the first time round!  :)

I'll try my credit card again tomorrow so unless anyone donates in the meantime that will take it over £200 plus the GiftAid.

[Flighty]

I've donated at last which means that the total is now £200 plus £36-67 GiftAid.*
That's a grand total in just a week, so thanks again to all those who've donated.  :)

*Make that £210 plus £39-49 thanks to anon anon!

[1066]

Betula, thanks for letting us know about the willow weaving. Looking forward to seeing the photos  :)

[betula]

Well we are now up to £230........thank you all so much. ;D

This means the willow growing project will get off to a wonderful start.

I become curious about this and googled willow weaving and you can make some amazing things.

Saw some pics of some amazing archways,just right for growing lovely roses or in my imagination could see one dripping with runner beans LOL  ;D

Anyone on here into willow weaving ?

[betula]

Evening all   :)

Thought I would give this a little bump as I am in a bumping mood LOL  ;D

[grawrc]

There seems to have been a bit of a lull. Still plenty of time to go though.

[lorna]

Excellent cause. As my daughter has worked for charities for several years (currently BHF) I have made a small donation to Gardening Leave and bought raffle tickets from BHF.

[Flighty]

The total with GiftAid, and including donations inadvertently made by two members on the Gardening Leave JustGiving page, now stands at just over £330!
Many thanks to all of you for being so generous. 

[betula]

We are doing so well this year.We are only at the end of October.

Big thankyou to everybody so far   ;D ;D ;D

[pumkinlover]

Glad to know TWO people have done that!!

[caroline7758]

Shame about the news this morning that Justgiving takes a bigger cut than other donation sites (5p for every £1). Maybe we should use a different site next year.

[daveyboi]

This does really annoy me at times the bad press for Just Giving.

Yes it is a commercial organisation and it charges for it's services. However it is now a trusted and respected organisation which handles donations securely and also deals with the paperwork and claiming the gift aid.

I recently looked at another charity which is using World pay to take donations and their charges are very nearly identical to those of  Just Giving.

Around £750m of Gift Aid is going unclaimed each year, according to research by the Charities Aid Foundation.

This is why so many charities actually use Just Giving as it is a very cost effective way of raising funds. Plus of course the whole concept of individuals having a fund raising page without having to create their own website etc.

We could of course elect someone to collect on behalf of A4A and then they pay the amount to our chosen charity. However the Just Giving way is much more suitable for our purpose.

[daveyboi]

However maybe we could use charitiestrust.org next year if people are happy with it.

[betula]

It is a difficult one this...when I first had the idea last year I was thinking people could send cheques to me to pass on to the charity.....It was quickly pointed out to me that it was much more practical to use something like Gift Aid..I had never heard of them.....I am a real dinosaur at times   :)

I am really happy with Gift Aid.....Flighty does the work on that side of it and he has been great.

I think maybe sometime next year if we do it all again we could look to see if there is a better deal but lets get this year over first.   ;D

[froglets]

My concern is more around the security of the site and justgiving does invest in good security and systems,  That doesn't come cheap.  I had fraud on my credit card in Jan 2009 and sadly the only site I used that was different in December was a charity gift site, so I'm very suspicious that their security wasn't up to scratch.

[caroline7758]

Here's the article from the BBC for anyone who's interested.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11654649

(Betula, Gift Aid is a different thing- a slip of the typing finger? ;))

[betula]

Caroline.you spotted the deliberate error then LOL  ;D

Sorry to hear about your bad luck froglets. :(

[daveyboi]

A final word on Just Giving

It is worth reading this article showing why the charges Just Giving make are worthwhile ignoring to the charities ...

http://charities.justgiving.com/2009/03/09/charity-news/justgiving-for-charities/aspire-raises-100000-more-with-its-justgiving-fundraising-strategy/

Now back to fund raising LOLS

Still quite a few places left on the surprise present draw .... choose your numbers ;D

[betula]

Just thought I would give our fund raising a little bump  :)

Christmas is drawing ever nearer LOL  ;D