Not a problem Martyn and I understand where you're coming from so I'm not taking it the wrong way.

Basically we are doing 2 things in 1 - touring the UK and trying to raise cash for charity. We do something for CR every year in one way or another and this seemed like an excellent opportunity to do 2 things that we enjoy. If we get accommodation then that's great - if not then the tent will be coming out and we'll still do the trip.

Thanks for your input - it's been appreciated

Phil

1: Good.

2: Yawn. Is the sun shining up there on your high horse? :) ;)

3: Hmm, so listing a company for the heinous crime of not givng you free stuff and insinuating they are mean and uncharitable is'nt slanging?

Good luck with your trip all the same. I don't wish you to think I'm against your whole enterprise, just felt you'd misjudged the charity knock backs page, which you've admitted. I confess I didn't see that you'd already said you'd be removing it. Hope you have fun and raise lots of money for charity.

Matt

Hi Matt

The sun isn't shining but it's bloody cold and lonely :) ;)

I wasn't saying they were mean, just saying in their own words "Our central marketing department focus solely on national
advertising as the main aim is to drive the awareness of the
Premier Travel Inn brand on a much larger scale eg via national
newspapers or websites"

Basically, unless you are national news then they don't want to know.

Thank you for your good wishes and please think about us in the wilds of Scotland when we're up your way sometime in July :) We'll actually be stopping over in Edinburgh on the way back down as we have some friends who live near the centre, near the Botonical Gardens

Cheers matey

Phil

Yeh i've always thought this. Aslong as you somehow associate yourself with a charity and claim on your high horse to be doing something worthwhile, then you are just getting someone else to pay for your holidays under the banner of charity.

Fair enough getting sponsorship if you are doing something different...or you are writing a book or you are just bear faced cheeky/pressy. But the charity thing has always made me wonder a little bit.

I'm nothing to do with Long Way Round UK, but I am doing Journey To Russia in September with 2 of my mates - we're raising money for Everyman.

We thought long and hard about the charity thing. We were going to Russia, we were doing it anyway, in fact most of the planning was done and we started telling people we were off on our trip - at which point some people asked us - 'great... who you doing it for?'

Well no-one was our initial reply, and then we thought, well if people really want to use us as an excuse to give to charity we should make it easy for them - so we set up the justgiving page (Justgiving - Journey To Russia - as you asked so nicely) and as you can see we've had some donations - not a huge amount but more than would have gone in to Everyman if we'd not.

We could of course just turn around and go - 'well let's not go on the trip let's just donate our budget to Everyman'. Or we could say 'we're off to Russia, if you want to use us as an excuse to give to charity, great, go over here.'

I know which one I'd go for!

You have touched a chord here with me Matt.

One guy I know was "over the moon" when I put some money into his justgiving pot - apparently about 2-3 times more than he expected.

Another guy I know has never spoken to me or emailed me since I did not respond to his very obvious email asking for a contribution to his justgiving pot and his jaunt around in the desert - hard work no doubt, but.........

The moral I have learnt is that you find out who your friends are when you get involved with justgiving!!

I'll jump on your bandwagon too if there's room.
 

Yup, I'm doing the old charity fund-rasing thing too, and I'll admit it, I'm going to try and blag free stuff from people. I have no problem with it at all, because I know I'll only get it if they think they're getting something in return, and that will be the time and effort I put in to publicising the event and their product and service. The fact of the matter is, they're not giving you anything, they're bartering, and if you publicise well then they're actually getting something on the cheap, that's why companies give.

In the past I've organise charity events and people have said to me "what's the point, why not just give to charity directly?" at which point I usually dig out the collecting tin and say "OK, cough up".

Example of why there's nothing wrong with having fun and raising money. On Tower to Tower rally, 25 teams of people went begging for sponsors plugging the charity and plastering their cars with companies names, people came up to our bunch of Minis in Paris and asked what we were up to, when we explained out came their wallets, even chequebooks. and then the participants went rattling collecting tins round the car-park at Le Havre waiting for the boat back, loads of people dug in their pockets and threw in their unspent Euros, total result nearly £30,000 which probably wouldn't have gone to charity otherwise, because there wouldn't have been the people collecting.

Yes I know exactly what you mean - it's a very personal direct way of giving and really allows you to say what you're giving where. I suppose that will play well to some peoples vanity - but as an organiser you HAVE to just treat it as a collecting tin and nothing more - it's nice to see who's donated but it's just a collecting tin.

What I do like about JustGiving though is the ease and more importantly the fact that they make the gift aid thing so damn easy.

The same thing that happened to Mattcbf600 happened to us.

We explained that we were going to ride around the UK and when we were telling some friends the idea came up about us supporting Cancer Research. It went something along the lines of "well, you donate every year so why not tie the 2 together and raise more" so we did.

Getting the free stuff doesn't bother me - I'm hard faced enough to ask but in return I know that the companies sponsoring us expect a certain amount of publicity whether that's via press release, flyers, interviews with shameless plugs or whatever. At the end of the day I'm happy to be a media whore for them as long as they do their part.

As it is Breville UK are allowing us to use their resources and I will happily promote them to the hilt.

A thought.
 

I notice the site has a blog... now cos I'm a nosey bar-steward I love reading about people's trials and tribulations even before they've started travelling. So why not blog about your preparations a bit more? A regular blog with regular readers shows companies that you've got a base for them to publicise to. And in a blog I think having a grumble about something is allowed (vis: knockbacks).

PS as it's Breville I guess you get as many toasted sandwiches as you can eat?

Our Opinion
 

Well, firstly let me explan what we are doing. Driving to Australia from UK in a Land Rover. Not unusual on this site but unusual to me and certainly unusual to my friends. We are raising money for charity, and we will except some freebies (haven't asked for any yet, not sure we are going to or not). But here is where the big difference is for us, we are not sayng the trip is why people should sponsor us, because we want it do this. What we are doing is stuff we wouldn't normally do to raise money. Hence in April of last year I ran the London Marathon. Easy for some people but not for a 20st smoker (now ex) with a buggered body. 6 month of training later and I completed it in 5.5 hours. Ouch! And raised £3000+ in the process.

But also, to encourage people to sponsor me I offered to match every £1 donated with 50p from my own pocket (up to a total donaton from us of £500). This way I felt we were matching other peoples cash with my commitment and cash.

Next up I think have to go bigger, and will cycle from John O'Groats to Land's End, which will take 9 months to get ready for and two weeks to cycle.

Now I'm not saying any way is right or wrong, but I do get damn angry when ALL charity fundraising is written off as trying to get someone to pay for your holiday. My 'holiday' is 100% funded by myself and will have taken 4 years of savng to get. Brilliant! At the same time I am both trying to improve my health and raise money Even better! But I want to also be able to say is I enjoyed the marathon and I wll enjoy the cycle, without someone looking down on the charitable part of it as a means to an end purely for selfsh reasons.

Sorry rant over and back to finishng off the Chrstmas booze and food :)

Happy new year to all including those from Long Way Round Uk ...... Good luck

Thanks for the good luck message Ollie and thanks to Alex for the tips about the blog.

Once again we find ourselves in similar territory regarding things we wouldn't normally do.

I've ridden bikes for years on and off but due to an error at DVLA I had to resit my test and after getting divorced in 2006 I've met someone who likes bikes. We both decided that we'd do our test and do a ride of some description. Once we got chatting with friends the idea just snowballed.

So we are where we're at - organising a trip that we wouldn't normally undertake but now intend to use it to try to raise a lot of money for a worthy cause - not because we're after a free jolly holly.

BTW - One thing I've forgot to mention is that if anyone wants to ride parts of the route with us then please get in touch. I'd also like to try and organise a ride out from the start and possibly back home

Scratching each others backs...
 

Hi wonkydonkey - I think Alexlebrit touches on the fundament point (regarding sponsorship) above: essentially that they will want something (and positive!) for their association and support of your endeavour, and for a commercial company, that basically means brand publicity/product placement in the press/media.

Have you approached any of the motorcycle publications with details of your proposal? While the sportsbike mags may seem disinterested (unless you have a particularly strong pitch), you might find MCN or the monthly MCM newspaper style magazines would get on board and offer an interview and/or feature on your return at the very least? Perhaps you could even write the piece yourself? Likewise local (regional) television and radio news stations also like to feature 'what's going on in our region' type stories - worth a punt trying to arrange an interview with them when you are passing though...

Of course editors are notoriously hard to pin down for an actual commission or guarentee of anything being published - but if you can get their support, then at least you would then have a solid lever to use when approaching any potential sponsors?

Just a thought...

JennyMo xxx

press/media
 

following on from JennyMo, i work in the media and I can promise you, we are all inherently lazy b*st*rds

if someone fronts up at a newspaper/magazine with decent words and (very importantly) decent pictures that are both targeted towards the right audience for the publication, then you are doing our work for us and it stands a reasonable chance of going in - the same is true of radio, although they aren't that big on pictures

this is particularly true if you don't want payment (although I have to say this seriously annoys us pros who do want payment for our work !!)

however, if you do some decent pre event publicity, and get stuff published, or regional airtime, at least when you go to companies asking for support then they can see you mean business and they might get a result.

getting publicity isn't as difficult as you might thing - publications and many media outlets are down to the bare bones on full time staff and they can't come up with bright ideas every bloody day

give someone a good reason to publicise you, your event and your commercial supporters and then you might get better results

cheers

dick

JennyMo and Dick - can't thank you enough.

We're putting together a press pack so that we can send it to the locals and I'll get in touch with MCN and MCM.

We'll also get some glossy pics in there too.

If you (or anyone else) have any tips the by all means PM or email me via the website or just leave a message here.

Any help is most welcome.

Regards

Phil