Red Cross Blogs

Fundraising buckets: five fascinating facts

By Mark Cox
April 29, 2010 at 11:37 am

It’s a fact: give someone a fundraising bucket and they tend to become a magnet for strange and wonderful occurrences. Every year, hundreds of people go out a-shaking to raise money for Red Cross Appeal Week – including you, if you like – and every year the anecdotes come rolling back in.

Here’s just five choice examples from recent Red Cross collections:

“I was handed £100 while collecting for Haiti. A man came up and asked if I could provide a receipt for a large amount of money.  I said: ‘I can certainly send you one’. Then he popped off to the cash point and came back with a hundred quid!”
Becky

“Someone proposed to me during Red Cross Appeal Week 2008. He asked: ‘How much for your number?’ and I quoted him a tenner. Then he said: ‘Okay, how much to marry you then?’ He was joking, I think…”
Rachel

“Last year, I was approached by a young man coming off a train straight from prison, with all his belongings in a carrier bag. He said: ‘I know you guys help a lot of people’ and emptied the contents of his pockets into my Red Cross bucket. I was choked!”
Anne

“Collecting in the City of London, it always surprises me how people see the Red Cross symbol and mistake it for a tour guide badge. I’m always getting asked for directions by tourists, which I’m happy to give – provided they hand over the cash first.”
Katrina

“I was shaking my bucket and shouting the names of some disasters we’ve helped at over the years, including the Asian tsunami. A little old lady sat on a nearby bench called me over and told me: ‘I’m from Sri Lanka and the Red Cross saved my family’s lives’. Then she put twenty quid in my bucket. I was really touched.”
Naeem
Champion fundraiser (last year’s total: £997.00)

So sign up now or find out how you can help us raise money this year – and I assure you that a heart-warming story, massive donation or marriage proposal will be just around the corner…

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Tags: collections, fundraising, volunteer, Volunteering

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