Fundraise for us
Make your own difference for young people in Myanmar
Fundraising is, above all, FUN! It can be fantastic for your own wellbeing, and for those around you. It feels good to do something amazing to help others.
Here are some great ideas for you to run your own fundraising activities. Then scroll down for 10 steps to running a successful fundraiser event.
Social activities
Cake/craft sales - you just need someone to bake or make your stock, and a place to put up a table to sell it. This is a great side-activity in the workplace or at community groups.
Tea/coffee mornings - the venue can be anywhere, even your own home. Just remember to include nibbles!
Whist/bridge drive - in fact, any games night can become a fundraiser with an entry donation and a prize for the winner.
Quiz - search online for ‘online quiz’ and you will find loads of platforms and, importantly, quiz questions! An online quiz with an entry donation is easy for people to enter, especially during cold winters, while an in-person quiz can include tea and cake sales and a raffle.
Talk - so many people have an expertise or hobby which could make for inspiring talk. Depending on where and when, we may even be able to arrange speaker for you about Burma. As always, remember tea and cake sales as well as an entry donation.
Sweets-in-a-jar - or guess-the-weight, or guess-the-name - all the old classics are still great money-raisers which can be added on to other events.
Dinner/cocktail parties - can be great fundraisers because you get to talk about what you are raising money for. If dinner is too much preparation, stick with drinks and nibbles!
Do you have a skill? - it could be painting, playing the guitar, quilting, baking cakes or anything else. How about running a beginners’ course for charity?
Online giving - sign up to easyfundraising, it is absolutely free, every time you buy anything at one of their thousands of shopping partners they will make a small donation to Prospect Burma at no cost to you! Find out more.
Challenge events
Mass participation events - are you looking at getting involved in a marathon, half-marathon, cycle event, trek, mountain-climb, triathlon or other gruelling physical and mental challenge? We would love you to pick us as your chosen charitable cause.
Adrenalin rushes - have you ever dreamed of doing a skydive, bungee jump, zip wire, cave dive or other amazing experience? You’ll probably want to shout about it on social media, so why not do it for charity and get everyone involved raising money too?
Adrenalin-free challenges - there are plenty of challenges which don’t require peak fitness. Grow a beard or moustache (probably easier for men), shave your head (probably redundant for some men), do a sponsored silence or art activity, learn a new skill - anything which presents a challenge that people will find interesting and want to support you to do.
Other events
Community events - many local community groups do fantastic work to constantly raise money for good causes. If you are part of a golf club, dog owners’ club, school-affiliated group or any other type of group, we would love you to consider us as your nominated charity for a period of time, or for one-off events.
Corporate fundraising - many wonderful businesses put a strong focus on giving back to their community and to the world. If your values include young people, skills and human rights, please get in touch with us to chat about how we might fit with your brand.
10 steps to running a successful fundraising event
Once you have decided and planned your activity, you will need to get people interested. Firstly, you will need to tell people why you are doing this. Why is it important to you? What is your story?
Secondly, you will need to tell them about the cause you are supporting. A suggested wording could be: “I am raising money for education materials to support young people in Myanmar/Burma who are fleeing conflict. Prospect Burma helps them access education to become doctors, engineers and other experts whose skills will be needed to rebuild their shattered communities”.
If you are raising money online, there are several fundraising websites which can help you. We recommend JustGiving. Once you register, go to Prospect Burma’s JustGiving page and click/tap the blue button on that page marked ‘fundraise for us’, and follow the instructions.
To assist your marketing, you can download the Prospect Burma logo and some photos here where you will also find forms for gift aid (UK only) and setting up a standing order. If you are running an in-person event in the UK, please ask anyone who donates to fill in a gift aid form, and then send the forms to us, thank you.
Then shout about your activity! Online, use your social media and ask everyone you know to share your story too. If you have set up a JustGiving page, post that link to everyone so they can donate via your page. Don’t be shy, be shameless! Let us know too, so that we can share your story on our social media.
For in-person events, use our logo and photos to design a poster or leaflet (in Word, or look for poster/leaflet templates in an online platform such as Canva). Don’t forget word-of-mouth - it is one of the best ways to persuade people to donate to your cause.
If you are not confident at putting logos and photos into printed materials, or into social media posts or web pages, get in touch and we will do our best to help you (we are a small team so we mustn’t over-promise!).
If you use JustGiving, donations will come to us automatically. You can also point people to the Donate button at the top of our website pages. If you are collecting at an in-person event, it may also be easiest for people to donate with their mobile phones. Send people to our donate button via:
…simply searching for Prospect Burma and finding the button on our website
…pointing their smartphone camera at this QR code, which you can put on a poster (you can copy/paste it below or download it here). Their smartphone will recognise the code and go straight to the button.
9. Sometimes, people like to know exactly what a donation amount would pay for. For smaller amounts, we suggest: £10 can buy a week’s mobile data so a young person can study safely from home, while £20-£50 can pay towards a laptop for subjects which can’t be studied on a mobile phone, such as IT or Engineering. But think big - if you can achieve a target in the £’000s, you may be able to fund half or more of an entire scholarship for a young person.
10. Once you have completed your activity, thank everyone for their support and their wonderful donations. (If you are just short of a target figure, you may be able to persuade everyone to donate a tiny bit more to reach that target!). Let us know how it went and, as well as thanking you, we can make sure the funding, gift aid and background admin is sorted.
Thank you for considering fundraising for us. Please get in contact with us at information@prospectburma.org to let us know what you’re going to do, and to ask us any questions. Good luck and have FUN!