January 04, 2019
The year began with a love-themed concert at Woolstone Community Centre in February, kindly organised by Pat Hodges. The event raised £166, and we also received a generous donation of £200 from the Lions Club of Milton Keynes (Stony Stratford).
A team of intrepid runners took on the MK Marathon and half-marathon in May. Between them, they raised a fantastic £1,464. The team included one of our fantastic social workers, who raised £540 single-handedly!
That same weekend, we also had two little Superheroes take part in the Superhero Fun Run. The children were adopted through SFCS and raised a whopping £320! A big thank you to them for their brilliant hard work and effort.
On 13th May, we celebrated National Children’s Day with our first family fun day. All toys, games and refreshments were kindly donated, and we raised £375 from it. Thank you to everyone who volunteered.
Three different Trusts awarded us funds to purchase some special laptops to support our social workers and enhance the service they provide whilst ‘on the road’.
We were also chosen to be part of the Tesco Bags of Help Scheme. Tesco customers in our local area voted for us to receive £2,000, which will cover the cost running one of our therapeutic parenting courses this year.
And we were sad to mark the end of our year-long partnership with law firm Dentons. They raised an incredible £22,797 for us throughout the year! We can’t thank them enough for their dedication and commitment to supporting our work.
In August, we were delighted to hear that our application to Children in Need was successful. We’ve received a pledge for £29,486, to support our family days and outings across the next three years.
The Trinity Fellowship Circle in Leighton Buzzard chose us as their charity of the year and raised an impressive £619.55 for us! A big thank you to all involved, especially Marilyn Powell, who also sits on our adoption panel.
We were also selected to hold a bucket collection at Northamptonshire County Cricket Club. Thanks to the generosity of their cricket fans, we raised £590 that evening.
One of our adopters also nominated us to receive a donation from their employers, David Lock Associates. We received a generous £500.
September was a popular month for birthdays. Three people set up birthday fundraisers on our Facebook page, raising a total of £353.53 between them. If you would like to set up a fundraiser on Facebook, click here to get started.
October was particularly busy! Throughout the month, we ran our annual Let’s Eat! campaign and Mindful Chef donated some recipe cards for participants to use. The campaign raised £500.
To mark National Adoption Week in mid-October, we re-launched our regular giving scheme, Friends of St. Francis. Several new people have already signed up, while others have been inspired to make a donation. We’re so grateful to everyone for their generosity.
Pat Hodges was busy on our behalf again, this time organising a charity quiz. It was a great night and all food and refreshments were kindly donated to us by Co-Op, so our costs were low. The event raised a fantastic £718.
And to round off the month, one of our staff team adorned her home with all things Halloween, and opened her door to the public – she raised £110 from donations!
November marked the end of our year-long relationship with Co-Op Local Community Fund. Our Fundraising Officer attended the Big Celebration Day and was presented with a cheque for almost £6,000. Co-Op were also incredibly generous throughout the year with volunteer time and gifts in kind, making the total support we received from them worth almost £6,500. We’re very thankful for their support.
To round off the year, we were selected by New Life Church in Milton Keynes to be one of two local charities to benefit from the closing collection at their Christmas Carol Concert on 23rd December. We don’t yet know how much was raised, but we are so grateful to have been chosen.
And there are still a couple of weeks left to purchase tickets for the MK Community Foundation annual car raffle! SFCS receives a percentage of the moneys raised from all the tickets we sell. Tickets are being sold in our local pub, the Cross Keys. But if you’d like to buy some tickets, or sell some on our behalf, please contact our Fundraising Officer on 01908 572700 or leannes@sfcs.org.uk
We are so grateful to everyone who has donated their time or money to support our work with vulnerable children and their parents and families. As you can see, it’s been a busy year and our donations and funds have come from a wide range of sources. If we’ve forgotten anyone, we’re very sorry – we hope you’ll forgive us! (Or get in touch with us and we’ll happily add you to the list!)
And for those who gave anonymously – we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your generosity.
If the above has inspired you to get involved with fundraising for SFCS, please visit our I’d Like To Help page for lots of advice and information about the things you could do.
Here’s to 2019!
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