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VSO - Sharing Skills, Changing Lives

Testimony - Laura Stephenson

‘Pirates of the Caribbean Party’ – Total raised £4, 000

“I have never been the sort of person who has felt very comfortable about asking people for sponsorship money; therefore I knew that I would never be able to reach the Fundraising target through e-mails to friends and family alone. As such, I determined that a party would be in order! I spent a couple of month’s just discussing with friends what sort of Fundraising party I would organise, where I would have it (I looked at numerous venues, each of which had their own hire price and minimum bar spend) and determining how I could successfully market the event. One day, a friend suggested a Boat Party on the Thames and that evening I walked the length of Embankment, speaking with each of the bar/ club owners. Finally, I found the Yacht Club, where the manager was very supportive of the cause and from here; things seemed to fall naturally into place.

"I was able to negotiate free hire of the 350 capacity Boat and was given the name of a contact at Corona for Sponsorship. The venue of the party meant that ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ was an obvious theme and fancy dress was a must. Over the forthcoming months, I worked hard to secure the sponsorship of Corona and then began marketing the event 6 weeks in advance so that people had the date in the diary and time to buy costumes / spread the word. At the same time, I contacted numerous local businesses to obtain over 20 raffles prizes, which ranged from Magnums of Champagne signed by F1 drivers to theatre tickets and dinner vouchers. The evening was a real success, with over 320 people attending and £4,000 raised for VSO.

"As I organised the party alone, all of this would not have been possible without the help of my friends, from thinking of the initial idea to securing raffle prizes, decorating the venue promoting the event and collecting money on the night. As such, I would suggest that where possible, get your friends involved and all have fun. If you are excited about the event, so will everyone else be!

"Good luck and enjoy your fundraising!”

Laura Stephenson, 2006 Kilimanjaro Accenture team trekker, on organising her own Pirates of the Caribbean Party

Submit your photos and testimonies

We are always on the look out for eye-catching photos and inspiring quotes to illustrate the fundraising section and entice future fundraisers. If you think you have captured the spirit and emotion of your fundraising event and that it would definitely inspire others to raise money for VSO, we would like to hear from you. For a feature on the photo gallery and the testimonies sections, ideally we would like to have a maximum of 10 photos per event with a brief synopsis (for the photo gallery) or a detailed account of the event (about 200 words for the testimonies) including the amount you have raised. To have your event featured, email the events team.

Supplying images to us

In order to maintain high standards for our web publications and If you would like to send us images for possible use, please follow these guidelines:

All images must be copyright cleared: i.e., you must own the copyright or have written permission from the copyright holder or photographer to reproduce the image.
You must have permission, ideally in writing, from any individual who is recognisable in the picture, or whose creative work is shown.
Image files should have a resolution of at least 280 dpi (dots per inch). We can ‘resample’ images to this resolution, provided the result can be used at a reasonable size. Ideally, images should be in JPEG or GIF format, but we can consider images in other formats.
If you have prints, we can scan these in-house.