Fundraising

Special Friends Club is a registered charity; we rely entirely on grants, donations and fundraising as we receive no statutory funding.

The cost of raising a severely disabled child can be up to three times more than for a child without a disability so each family only pays a nominal subscription to help with the day to day administration of the club. All activities, trips and events are offered at no cost to the families.

We have been lucky enough to receive funding from:

And generous grants and donations from:

SOUTH GLOUCESTERSHIRE COUNCIL SHORT BREAKS

RAOB     RBS
AXA Health     Spielman Trust
YAPP Charitable Trust

ESG Robinson Charitable Trust

A huge thank you to all of our donors and funders for their support.

Running costs for the club are in excess of £30,000 and with the membership of the club growing costs will only increase in future years. All donations will help to improve the quality of life for disabled children, their siblings and carers.

 

FUNDRAISING NEWS  2011- 2012 !

Recent Grants and Donations 

We at Special Friends Club, would like to write and express our thanks and appreciation to KPMG for your very kind Donation of £500, which we received in January 2012.

Your donation will enable us to provide many special activities and days out for our Disabled children and their siblings during the School Holidays. We already have an Easter Programme lined up which includes a variety of fun and educational visits which will benefit our children and their families in so many ways.

 

SOUTH GLOUCESTERSHIRE COUNCIL SHORT BREAKS

Special Friends Club has for the year APRIL 2011 – March 2012 received funding from South Gloucestershire Short Breaks. This funding has enabled us to provide activities throughout the holidays, we have also developed two monthly activities , trips to the cinema, swimming and soft play centres.  The funding also enabled us again to go on our very special weekend trip to Center Parcs , which was an amazing experience for all our families that went. The trustees and Special Friends Club members would like to say a huge thank you to South Gloucestershire Council. We have had an amazing year  visiting some of our favourite places and also visiting some new venues and trying new activities. Please see attached a report and summary of the year , feedback from parents and the activities we took part in.SFC Report April 2011-March 2012 copy

Short Break Services Statement (FV)-1

 

FUNDRAISING NEWS 2010-2011

This year we have been successful in securing sufficient funding to enable us to visit bigger venues and try new activities. We have been supported by important and large organisations such as Children in Need, Quartet and South Gloucestershire Aiming High. This has also allowed us to open up to more families doubling our membership.

We received funding from South Gloucestershire Aiming High grant. The monies received from Aiming High paid for our South Glos family activities throughout the year, it allowed us to introduce new monthly activities and funding for those families to go to Center Parcs. We are also thrilled that they have agreed to fund us the same amount for the next financial year. This is fantastic news!

Children in Need funding has been vital and supports our  activities throughout the year. Children in Need fund us for a two year period. A few trustees attended the Children in Need event at Bristol Zoo this year ….who could forget Sophie’s appearance on the telly!!!

Quartet  funding contributed to the costs for the Bristol Families to attend the Center Parcs weekend in January 2011. We all had amazing time and a first for Special Friends Club.

FMS  funding has paid for activities throughout the year including cinema, Diggerland, Butlins and most of the Summer Activities.

Sarah Townsend (Trustee) was nominated for a funding award by her work AXA Sunlife. This is for the voluntary work she does for Special Friends Club and won £1000 for the club. WELL DONE SARAH and THANK YOU !

We received over £1000 in Memory of Skanda Vaitilingam   (Maya’s Dad and Rani’s Grandpa!). Maya’s family asked for donations to be made to Special friends Club. Thank you Baba X

We were touched to receive a donation of over £1600 from Alex McCall, Tom Coombs and Matt Hooper who cycled from Land’s End to John O’ Groats to raise funds for the club. Their adventure was sponsored by Warwick Humphries of Bristol Honda. £1000, from the ESG Robinson Charitable Trust. We were pleased to see them at our Xmas party to say a huge THANK YOU !

We also say a huge thank you to all the smaller donations we receive from members, families, friends, local groups and organisations there are far too many to mention but here are a few examples:

Many Thanks to the residents of Linden Close sheltered housing in Stockwood who held a raffle and donated £80 to the club which funded a trip to Slimbridge

Thanks to Court Ladies after Sophie had given a talk they gave us a donation of £150 to pay for our Cattle Country trip.

The Lacy and Hines family donated £250 after the sale of their car.  Mickey Hines is also aiming to raise £1000 by being Alcohol Free for the 2011. There are links to his fundraising page on our Facebook page so please help support him!

Chantal our secretary is a member of The Bristol Samba Group and they raised funds of £250 for the Charity.

The club could not run without all these smaller donations as they pay for activities such as swimming and soft play.

We also hold Special Friends Club sponsored events such as train ride, summer BBQ and raffle at Christmas party.

We have been able to visit the Circus and Funderworld this year thanks to both organisations donating us tickets, these tickets have been donated to us from local businesses.

 

 

 

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Shop Online and Raise Money!

Have you heard about easyfundraising yet? It’s the easiest way to help raise money for Special Friends Club! If you already shop online with retailers such as Amazon, Argos, John Lewis, Comet, iTunes, eBay or HMV, then we need you to sign up for free to raise money while you shop!

So how does it work?

You shop directly with the retailer as you would normally, but if you sign up to for free and use the links on the easyfundraising site to take you to the retailer, then a percentage of whatever you spend comes directly to us at no extra cost to yourself.

How much can you raise?

Spend £100 with M&S online or Amazon and you raise £2.50 for us. £100 with WH Smith puts £2.00 in our pocket and so on. There are over 2,000 retailers on their site, and some of the donations can be as much as 15% of your purchase.

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