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You couldn’t pay me…

By Chloe Day
March 30, 2009 at 11:01 am

A successful community fundraising formula for many a year has been the sponsored event. Millions of pounds are raised annually through this ritual, in a veritable smorgasbord of guises.

Sponsored events can be loads of fun but I can’t help feeling that some are more appealing than others. Here are four fundraising ideas I would not be first in line for:

Chloe as a childHaving my head shaved

This is mainly for reasons of vanity. And to evade flashbacks to the boy haircuts I had as a child, courtesy of the combination of my mother and the fashion black hole that was the 1980s.

Swimming with great white sharks
Basking sharks, their gargantuan yet harmless cousins, maybe. Basically I am a wuss.

Sitting in a bath of dog food

Baked beans, custard, rice pudding I can hack. Dog food on the other hand is taking this traditional, bathing-centric fundraising escapade to the extreme. I would find this hard to do without copious wretching (at best) and whilst I could cope with smelling of tomatoes for weeks, parfum de rabbit in gravy is something I am keen to avoid.

World naked bike ride
For reasons of safety and personal dignity I would sit this one out. Oh, and it’s just a bit wrong.
Fundraisers during Appeal Week 2008
Thankfully a lot of people genuinely enjoy some crazy-bizarre stuff and, for the rest of us, there are plenty of other ways to fundraise for our cause. If you’re up for a challenge, find out what the Red Cross has to offer in terms of events

But it’s not all about sitting in beans or throwing yourself out of a plane. In May we’ll be celebrating Red Cross Appeal Week and there are loads of ways you can get involved. The options are practically endless – so what will you do?

Images © Alan Day and © Alex Maguire


Comments (4) »

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  • http://redcross.org.uk Katrina Crew

    I’ve always wanted to swim with great whites, as long as I’m swimming in a cage. A really strong one, not one that would break off and fall to the ocean floor, like in a movie I saw when I was a kid.

    About your world naked bike ride – does that mean you’d do a UK naked bike ride? Or just around London?

  • http://redcross.org.uk/ Katrina Crew

    I’ve always wanted to swim with great whites, as long as I’m swimming in a cage. A really strong one, not one that would break off and fall to the ocean floor, like in a movie I saw when I was a kid.

    About your world naked bike ride – does that mean you’d do a UK naked bike ride? Or just around London?

  • Chloe Day

    No. No, I would not. End of.

  • Chloe Day

    No. No, I would not. End of.