Leonard Cheshire Disability charity have had a fantastic year, with their fundraisers taking on a whole host of challenges to raise money and awareness for the charity that helps support over 21,000 disabled people in the UK.
They’ve shared some of their top fundraising tips with us:
“Let’s be upfront about this: raising money is not an easy thing to do. Unless you’ve got a convenient group of millionaire friends, you’ll probably have to put in a reasonable amount of effort and try a few different tactics to reach whatever fundraising goal you’ve got ahead of you. Here are five of our top tips to help you get on the way:
1) Find out as much as you can about your chosen charity. The more you know, the easier you’ll find it to persuade potential sponsors to give you money.
2) Create your personal online fundraising page straightaway. ‘Personal’ is the key word here – make it clear that the page is about you, your challenge and your reasons for doing it. Get a photograph of you up there (ideally in your running gear, or doing something a bit daft). Write a few words explaining what you’re doing and why and of course, give a few facts about the charity you’re supporting – especially if you know exactly what your fundraising will support.
Need inspiration? Gary, Ali and Martin have each set up great pages for our charity!
3) Ask for help, not just donations. While you might think asking everyone you know for money is the way forward, it pays off to line up a key group of friends who you don’t ask for money. Instead ask them to share the load by helping you draw up your fundraising plan, rounding up new contacts, or organising some mini-events for you. Probably best these aren’t your convenient group of millionaire friends, though.
4) Remember to say thank you. People like to give money to charities. They also really like to get something back from it. At fundraising events this is easy – they get their food, or a raffle prize, or the chance of being crowned pub quiz champion. For anyone giving a donation on your fundraising page, you can literally say thank you by tagging them in your Facebook status or in a Tweet, so they get highlighted as a generous person – and include the link to your page so anyone who hasn’t yet donated has the chance to save face!
5) Have fun, raise more.Don’t rely on sponsorship alone – make your fundraising as varied and fun as you possibly can. Got a group of friends who like a get-together? Invite them to a film night – unlimited dvds and a bowl of popcorn for £5. Work colleagues always snacking? Hold a regular cake sale in the office. It’s really important that you enjoy what you’re doing because the more enthusiastic you are about it, the happier your friends, family and colleagues will be to support you – and the more you’ll be able to raise.
We’ve only got space for our top five tips here, but if you’d like some more – including lots of ideas of different themes and fundraising events – then you can find them on our own events blog.
Good luck, and happy fundraising!”
Graham Machin
The 
In less than 100 days, thousands of runners will be taking to the start line of the 
A few weeks before the 
