Environmental illness charity MCS-Aware wanted to get more involved in community fundraising, and decided to test the waters with a stall at a local festival - learning some important lessons along the way.

This summer we decided to book a stall at a local community event – the Air Music Festival in Dorset. At first glance this wasn’t an obvious choice: we are a charity that offers help and support to people suffering from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (environmental illness which includes multiple sensitivities to chemicals, foods and electrical fields). A music festival filled with transmitters and speakers wouldn’t be accessible for many of our members; but we had a different objective.

Researching the event

Earlier in the year we had drawn up a plan to decide which events we should attend. We’re a small charity and don’t receive any regular funding (relying on subscriptions and donations to keep going), so it’s vital that we have a good fundraising strategy. Our events fall into two categories: those we attend to promote our services and to attract new members to help, and events which are primarily a source of raising funds.

The Air Music Festival fell into the latter category. We hadn’t done anything like this before, but we knew a standard information stall was not going to be effective as we wanted to raise as much money as possible from the event. We did some research, going round other local events to see what other charities were doing.

The results were surprising. As we walked through fields and town centres it was apparent that a lot of small charities are on the same journey as us. Many rely on volunteers and don’t have dedicated marketing teams. They borrow gazebos, tents and tables and spend money on posters and the leaflets advertising their services. They think up amusing games and hold cake sales to try and raise money.

We made a careful note of what worked and what didn’t, and decided that we wanted to use our stall to host a fun game, which festival goers could pay to play and win prizes. We designed a game that was fun and in keeping with our ethos, raising awareness of healthy living. The game was competitive and suitable both for children and adults, thus increasing the number of people who would want to take part.

We needed to ensure we pitched the price of playing the game right: too low and we’d not make much revenue, too high and people would simply walk past. We asked the festival organisers some detailed questions: How many people did they expect to attend the event? How much money did other stalls make last year? Did they all make that amount or was it only a select few? What other types of stall would be there? Would our activities fit in well with the expectations of the visitors?

Once we had the answers, we were able to judge that 50p per play would be about right. We also made sure there was a good chance of winning, so that people would come back to have another go.

Advertising is everything

Having a good and well-priced product on offer, however, wasn’t enough; we also needed to ensure our stall was attractive and stood out. Having looked at other charity stalls, several things became apparent: signs need to be big and clear, brightly coloured and focused around your key objective. Our top priority was fundraising, so we made a big poster advertising the game and kept the information about the charity in the background.

Posters should specify what the game is and how much it costs. People walk past in seconds, and in that short space of time they need to be able to see what they need to do, how much it will cost them and if there’s a prize.

We laminated two A2 posters and while they looked big on the dining room table, they looked really small outside stuck to the tent! In hindsight, A1 size would have been better. Space at events is limited - most charge per metre, with the standard pitch at just two metres wide (the size of a small garden gazebo), so you need to think about how to best use that space.

We spent around £100 on preparation for the event, but made sure that all our posters, etc could be reused at future events, so next time we’ll have very little outlay. Our prizes were all donated to us by companies, so cost us nothing.

Capturing attention

Passers-by don’t like to commit themselves. Although some people are naturally curious, most people won’t walk into a tent or peer inside to see a table; they prefer to be able to see what’s on offer from a safe distance. With this mind, we made sure our table and game were clearly visible. Looking at other stalls it was clear that customers preferred to approach tables that were either just poking outside the tent, or no more than half a metre inside.

We set up our stall at home a few days before, to check that everything was clearly displayed and our intentions were obvious from a reasonable distance. We made sure our display wasn’t just flat things on a table by including boxes and stands so that it was visually more dynamic and the information was more easily visible from a distance.

As the weather forecast was showery, we made sure our tent had walls, and we had a suitable backdrop for the table. We included plenty of colourful bunting, and in fact we were the brightest stall at the event!

A popular activity

On the day, people were queuing up to play our game - and we were pretty spot on with our estimate of 75 per cent of people winning, and a lot of winners coming back for a second go. In fact, we ended up needing more volunteers to run the stall than we’d initially thought, as it was so busy and people needed time off to enjoy the festival as part of the day.

All our volunteers were enthusiastic and let customers know that their money was going to charity. We asked our volunteers to wear the same coloured t-shirts and name badges, putting one person in charge of taking photos and updating our social media pages.

The debriefing

When we got back home we made a list of things to take to the next event (plenty of duct tape!), and made a note of things to consider next time - for example, of the prizes that were donated, we found that chocolate and toys went down particularly well.

We surveyed the pop-up posters, which made even the basic of gazebos look good, and compared them to the festival flags, which were more weatherproof but contained less information. We’re still discussing that! Most importantly, we passed on pictures of our event to the companies who donated prizes so they could advertise them on their social media, and reported back to our members so they could see how we spend our weekends!

All our hard work and preparation paid off, and the event was a resounding success. Yes, there are probably less tiring ways of raising money, but it was good fun and did a lot to raise the profile of our charity.

Nicki Greenham is chief executive of MCS-Aware, the UK’s leading charity for environmental illness. If you know someone who reacts to perfumes, cleaning products, foods or Wi-Fi, get in touch at www.mcs-aware.org.