Puzzlebrains

I won't go into the gory details but our printers brother went to Magaluf on Monday with a few of his pals. Beer and tomfoolery obviously came into play that night but there was a tragic accident. One of the boys (aged 20) slipped on the staircase and fell 3 floors down onto a marble floor and died instantly. The others came back to Leeds last night after having been given the OK to do so.

It's going to cost around £10,000 to get the poor boy's body home and his parents don't have that kind of money- and he had no insurance. The others are all band members and the first thing on the list is a charity music night. Another friend is going car booting at the weekend.

Does anyone have any quickfire fund raising ideas?

How sad!

Ask the local paper to run a story? Some people would probably contribute. Especially those who know him or the family.

That's awful.
Note that although I actually personally disagree with these methods on principle (because it's gambling) they do raise lots of money quickly.

I would suggest that if they are doing a charity music event then they should include a raffle (ask for donations of prizes for extra impact - I've always found that if you contact people like local bowling alley / ice skating rink / cinema etc. they will usually donate some free tickets as prizes). A chocolate tombola also is a real money spinner as is the choosing heads or tails game. (Ask if you don't know what I mean). Another one is when you sell packs of marked playing cards at £2 a card, then half the proceeds go to your cause and half to the winner of the card picked at random out of another pack.

Our church, and I imagine many others, runs monthly coffee mornings as a social thing for older members of the community with cake stalls, book stalls etc. The deal is that if you run it, you keep the profits for whatever you're fundraising for. They could ask around in the area for places that do that sort of thing, where the venue just want volunteers to be in charge of the event?

Thanks for ideas everyone. This morning our local jeweller, who has never met the lad, donated a necklace with a retail value of £2000 and just told Jonny to take it and get him home to his parents asap. Andrew Geoghan, Leeds, you are a star!!!

Aw, that's really nice, isn't it?

Wow! That is nice of him!

People can be so kind at times like these

Tricia