How do I raise money for my friend?

[soloula]

My lovely friend has had the devastating news that her cervical cancer has spread to her bowel and is now trying to raise £50k to get treatment not available on the nhs to give her the best chance of survival. Shes only 25 and has a wee girl who will be 1 on Wednesday. I fucking hate cancer.

We have a just giving page set up and are up to £17k already. She has been in the national press and local press (I assume I'm not allowed to share the articles here so haven't linked?) but I'm looking for suggestions of other things we can do to help her reach the target.

Ideally, it's things that have a small or no outlay and also things that can be arranged quickly as she really needs the treatment sooner or later.

We are on a new estate and a few of us are keen to organise some events that could involve everyone on the estate. There are a lot of families. With easter coming up we were thinking Easter egg hunt, maybe a treasure hunt, maybe a fund raising night but I'm unsure of how to plan some thing like that.

We are in a small-ish town too, so I'm wondering if there are things we could organise to get the wider community involved!

Any suggestions are really appreciated as I've never done anything like this before so really am flying blind.

Saturday car wash? Could get kids involved too

Item donations you could eBay

Curry night (or similar), perhaps a local village hall could let you use facilities

Charity auction, doesn't have to be for items, could also be for stuff like a free baby sitter for the night or someone to walk your dog for a week

A raffle

Locally there has just been a spaghetti super and bingo night, and raised a lot that way

Quiz evening.
A sponsored event, maybe for the children.
A jumble sale/car boot sale type event on a local open space. Either people pay for a table, and keep the money from what they sell, or people donate the proceeds from whatever they sell.

Some great ideas - thanks. Please keep them coming!

For the curry/spaghetti nights...who makes/provides the food? Would you get a local takeaway involved and factor this into the price?

Charity auction and tweet lots of celebrities to ask for signed photos etc to raffle.

Auction of Promises?
We do this for the church sometimes. People offer lifts for people and a cake a week etc...

We had a curry night, raffle and quiz and one of those raising the money made the food with friends. It was easy as made huge pots of curry (1 meat and 1 veg) and rice plus a poppadom each. I assume the cost of the food was taken from the amount raised but they raised a lot that night.

Can she get a loan in the meantime? Or can somebody else get a loan for her in the meantime. Quiz nights etc take time to organise and presumably the sooner she has the treatment the more likely it is to work. If you do a quiz night, do a raffle and try to sell raffle tickets to everybody. Go round the houses selling them. Get a few good prizes from local shops and businesses. Raffles can make a fortune.

She was diagnosed when her wee DD was 6mo so was on maternity pay and now sick pay so she's unable to get a loan. She's already looked into it and been knocked back. Crowdfunding is her only option. 😞

Some more great ideas - thank you!

Remortgage? Sell the house?

Also try sponsored events and ask local businesses to chip in, or ask them to offer raffle prizes/sell tickets (local pubs are good places to sell tickets).

Google Jason Manford's Charity Ninja's if you haven't heard from them already. It might be worth asking him if he'd endorse the crowd funding. He seems to particularly like supporting people who are already a way towards their target and asks his supporters - over night - to donate small amounts each that add up to the person reaching their target.

A duck race would potentially enable everyone to be involved....www.better-fundraising-ideas.com/rubber-duck-race.html. I've not been part of organising one but I've heard they can be quite lucrative if you manage to get sponsorship.

Good luck

Also make sure that she has approached any charities - is there any history of military service (doesn't always have to be the person but depends on the charity) or anything like trade union membership.

Ask a local pub if they will let you have a quiz night with all proceeds to the cause.
Rent a church hall and hold a little fayre with cakes, donated toys/clothes, drinks and some games for the kids that they have to pay to do (like that one where they find a duck with a certain colour dot on the bottom).

Have her surgeons suggested this alternative treatment?
Have you spoken to relevant experts in charities?

just that there are some very expensive treatments out there that are actually quack medicine
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47442946

One of my neighbours had cancer and needed the treatment unavailable on the NHS, her family set up a charity/second hand shop. It funded her treatment for a number of years, unfortunately the treatment stopped working and she sadly passed away, but the shop is now so successful, they put the money into other local charities (and do a massive weekly shops for the local food banks) with the proceeds.

She's a pharmacist Talkin and has read up loads and spoken to some pharmacist friends just to check she wasn't clutching at straws and they've said she's not. It's something that's funded in many other countries but due to the nature of the NHS it's too expensive for them to do here so getting it privately is her best option.

NWQM one of my Facebook friends suggested Jason Manford so I've posted there this afternoon. Thank you. Hoping something comes from that.

Does anybody you know work for a company that matches charity donations (usually large or FTSE companies) so, you raise £2000 and they will also give £2000.

What about a street party on your estate, maybe over Easter weekend, incorporate your Egg hunt but also have stalls like a tombola, beer/cider/wine tent, BBQ and all profits to your friend? You could have lots of stalls, guess the sweets in the jar, 2nd hand donated items, splat the rat etc? Almost like a school fete? Maybe you could get local businesses to donate prizes or food/drink eg) a butchers might give sausages/burgers etc? What a lovely friend you are Xxx

That's a good shout about the companies matching donations. Will look into that. I'm sure someone on our estate will work for someone that does it. Thanks.

Liking the street party. It's something we've talked about before but never done. I guess it's just the weather this time of year. We're in the west of Scotland so it's a bit hit and miss if we'd get good enough weather (more miss than hit tbh 🙈).

Have you shared the link for the gofundme page on all of your social media accounts(assuming you use Facebook ect)and ask family and friends to do the same,even if they can't afford to donate they may have people on they're accounts that would donate.

Get it shared as much as you can,the more people that know about it the more money you can get together and in a quicker timeframe.

Also speak to the local churches they usually have great contacts when it comes to sorting out fundraisers,knowing the sort of companies and people that will sponsor a well worth cause or will offer items to be auctioned off,the churches themselves may also be able to help.

Thanks ohtheholidays - hadn't thought of local churches. Will add them to my list.

I've shared a few times on my Facebook and have spent the morning messaging local Facebook pages and a couple of local businesses to see if they'll share too.