Michelle Urquhart, treasurer at Bumps 2 Four, Lincolnshire
Bumps 2 Four is a not-for-profit baby and toddler group in a small village in south Lincolnshire. The group is run by an ever-changing committee of volunteers who have children that attend the group. Treasurer, Michelle Urquhart shares her top tips on fundraising.
Bumps 2 Four has been serving the community of Langtoft and the surrounding area for more than 20 years. We meet on a Friday morning during term time and welcome anywhere between 15 and 30 families each week. Numbers tend to be higher in autumn and winter and drop off slightly as the weather improves going into the summer months.
Weekly themes
We have a different theme each week, with a craft table and messy play based on that theme. Then we rotate through our toys, including our play kitchen, balance beam, construction toys, wooden garage, doll corner, farm animals and dinosaurs – to name a few.
We finish off each session with story time and singing. And it wouldn’t be a baby group without tea, coffee and biscuits!
Covering costs
We charge families who attend £2 per family group – no matter how many children they have. This covers some of our costs, but we rely on donations and fundraising to make up the rest.
Here’s a few of fundraising ideas that have worked well for us:
Register with easyfundraising.org.uk – Once you’ve signed up, encourage your parents/carers to join. It costs absolutely nothing to join and when you do your online shopping with selected retailers (more than 7,000 of them), you get a small percentage back. We registered in September 2022 and have already raised £1,10 for the group.
Design and sell Christmas cards – We did this for the first time last year and it was a huge success. We used classfundraising.co.uk. The children design a Christmas card and parents/carers can order products (Christmas cards, gift wrap, mugs, tea towels) with that design on it. If you send your designs back early enough you can earn up to 25% commission. We raised £97 from doing this.
Do a raffle – We do an Easter raffle each year, making up Easter hampers made with donations from local businesses. We raised £68 in our Easter raffle this year.
Sponsor a session – We have asked several local businesses to sponsor specific sessions. For example, a local real estate agent donated £80 for our summer outing last year, a building developer donated £40 for our Halloween session and the owners of a local industrial estate donated £100 for our Jubilee session last year (we only asked them for £40!).
We have found it works best if you are very specific with your ‘ask’. We also send our supporters photos from the session that they can use on their own social media. Be sure to check with your parents/carers first that they are happy for the photos to be used in this way.
Ask for donations – We live in an area with several quarries and cement works run by large national companies. We have had donations of toys and resources from Breedon Group and Tarmac. We also approached Lightspeed Broadband who were doing a lot of promotion and marketing in our area.
Again, being specific with your request seems to help. In all these cases we asked if they could support us with replacing some of our toys that had gone mouldy in storage during the pandemic. We invited a representative from the company to the group to do a handover, which is a good photo opportunity for them. We always thank our sponsors on our social media and send photos to the local newspaper and village magazine.
We have looked at more formal funding opportunities (through grants and funds), but many of these have restrictions on what they will fund and a lot will not fund running costs. But it is still worth looking at this type of funding if you need funds for a large project.
Good luck with your fundraising!