Juggling fundraising and full time education can be challenging
Fundraising and full time education is definitely possible, especially when you break down the process; which reduces the pressure and stress.
There are a plethora of ways you can tackle fundraising, for example: either planning a large number of smaller activities such as raffles each month, or planning 3-5 larger fundraising events to bring in larger sums of money over a longer period of time. The second method worked best for me personally, as I could simultaneously plan the event and raise a large sum of money, whilst managing to complete my assignments at the same time. Early planning meant that I didn’t have to think about fundraising in-between my fundraising events, giving me time to focus on my education making the whole process more manageable.
Planning the days I would fundraise in advance relieved the stress of fundraising events, which gave me more time to understand the audience I was targeting to help raise funds, the best time and location to launch the event, all allowing me to realise what I am capable of and what I can push myself to do. This helped me to aim higher with my fundraising goal, as the activities I had planned and completed financially surpassed what I thought I could possibly do. For example, I worked on hosting a club night which took some preparations however it allowed me to gain 75% of my fundraising target! I also hosted a Christmas banquet; where I prepared food with some of my friends. I charged an entry fee for the banquet and I raised 18% of my target!
This therefore reinforces that even though the work load increases, you should see this as an opportunity to reach new heights within life and in your education, because you’ll feel more confidence in knowing you were able to reach a target fundraising, which is something you likely have not done before.
To conclude, taking time to come up with a plan early on, and viewing fundraising as something fun to do away from assignments will allow you to smash your fundraising target!
A huge thank you to our wonderful volunteer Francesca Ezennolim from University of Reading for writing this blog post!
