Ideas for DS14 to do for a sponsored something...

[washingandcleaningtoday]

...to raise money for a charity. If anyone has any inspiration or ideas please could you tell me?

Sponsored swim maybe? How many lengths?

I am all out of energy and inspiration!
Thank you!

Climbing snowden is a nice idea! Thank you
Abseil sounds amazing fun.

I just think whatever he does needs to have some relevance to the cause.
I always think with fundraising things like (for example) abseiling down a cliff seems odd because unless it's to raise money for an abseiling group that desperately needs funds and he is absolutely terrified of doing it so it's a massive challenge to it - then it really is just "pay me to do something fun".

The cumulative idea works well.
Could he pack shopping in a supermarket, but say he was going to pack 'a ton' - like a tonne's worth - average the weight of a single bag and pack that many over the course of a week?
It's like the idea of 'running to Paris' but only running in your town, if you see what I mean.
Can he litter pick 'a family's year long shopping ' s worth, or something?

My sponsored abseil was bizarrely to raise money for a charity for the blind. It was definitely fun for me. I do think I got money to just have a great day- although it obviously all went to charity. In fact, i had so much fun, they let me abseil down twice!

I agree with the poster who said it all seems a bit random - you haven’t given a reason why you want your son to do a sponsored event, for example:

• friend or family member diagnosed with illness so sudden urge to raise money for a related charity
• school has set them a task to do a sponsored event
• you think he needs a project to focus on/build skills etc
• Scouts project

So WHY is it you’re looking for ideas? Might give some focus for the answers.

Did you have to pay to abseil though? So did you pay or did the donations go towards it?
(To be fair I have no idea how much an abseiling session costs)
I just find the ones where people raise money to go on a trip abroad to "help" people a bit 😬 if you get what I mean.
Most of the money people donate actually pays for the flights, accommodation etc.
My nieces have done those types of charity trips. I donated money but had to bite my tongue as really it was a two week holiday with a couple of days of "charity" work while there.

I agree it matters what he's fundraising for. If it was one of these 'volunteering' holidays I also wouldn't give money no matter what the fundraising activity was.

I really prefer if there’s a benefit to someone else. I personally don’t really understand walking or running or swimming for money - surely that just benefits you.

I would sponsor a litter pick or something else useful.

But unless it's raising money to purchase those litter picky-up grabbers or bin bags then what would the money be for?

How it generally works is that a person or group says "I/we will run/swim 5km - please sponsor me/us for x charity" and people donate £5/10/15 or thereabouts, and everything raised goes to x charity.

So the only benefit to the person doing a run/swim type activity is the feel-good feeling that they have done something and it has raised money for charity.

I think all the other issues being discussed here are overcomplicating matters!

I think sponsored events are becoming less popular as people are reluctant to fund an activity the recipient wants to do anyway like a 10k run. What about a blind card or sweepstake with the option to win a portion of the money and the rest of the proceeds going to the charity. My (much younger) DD did a guess the number of jelly beans in the jar at a family party last year and raised £25 for charity and one happy relative got to take away the jar. Is there a teen version he could adapt this concept to like an online gaming competition with the winner of the F1 race or whatever taking a small cash prize?

I think people know how a sponsored event works. However, nowadays, there’s definitely sponsor-fatigue so you’ll find that people won’t sponsor, just because.

People sponsor people because they believe in the cause, or the person. Asking someone to sponsor a random event, is, to put it simply, begging. It may be important to the person doing the event, but not to the person being asked to sponsor them.

so to do a sponsored event with no real passion for the challenge or charity is rather random.

To be honest if the charity/cause is something I feel I would like to donate to I don't always think someone has to do something for it.
For example if your sons school library had a load of books destroyed by a fire or something and a request is put out for donations of money to replace the books - I would happily just donate the money.
I wouldn't expect him to swim 100 lengths or something. What if he couldn't do it? Should I then say "well sorry but you can't have new books now"?

Yes, I agree with the first poster. Being sponsored to do something fun or achieve something for yourself is all a bit of a nonsense. I don't ever sponsor events like that.

When people are doing something useful for charity, I'll support it. Putting on a dinner, baking cakes, gardening, washing cars.

@washingandcleaningtoday sorry if this all sounds negative.
Things I think that are good for raising money are things that can be done by a group.
For example...
Car Boot Sale/jumble sale (all proceeds to the charity)
Car Wash (usually a summer thing)
Christmas Card delivery service (a local thing that instead of people buying stamps to post cards they pay for a local group to hand deliver cards)
Putting on an event like a Bingo night.

You still haven’t given the reason for doing a sponsored event - how has this come about and what is the purpose (obviously it’s to raise money but why)?

You’d do the litter pick and in thanks the neighbours would donate £5 to whatever the charity is? Much more useful than just running up a hill or something.

But what if he couldn't do the litter pick for some reason.
Would people then not donate?
Surely you do a litter pick because you want to do that for the community. That's the "charitable" reason.

In our village, we have a small group of people who do litter picking voluntarily once a month.

What would you sponsor? £5 for every sack filled? Per street? Per hour?

These days there's so many sponsored events going on that people mostly donate because they want to donate to the charity anyway, or because they want to support their close family member/friend. So it doesn't really matter what he does. If you want him to have a project to work on, just pick that and make a separate donation to charity.

I agree with lots of PP that I would be pretty fed up at being asked to sponsor someone to do something useless like swim or walk.

On the other hand, I’d be happy to sponsor someone for picking litter, walking shelter dogs, reading to people in a care home etc.

I wouldn't have thought it surprising many friends and family will sponsor you regardless of what you do as it is, for most, done through a sense of obligation/duty/pressure not to say no to the child even when they don't care or want to sponsor.

If you are doing to a tougher, unknown crowd you need to market what you are doing and make it something people will see value in and actively engage with/want to see done.

It is not about the charity (people who want to give to charity already do), it is about the child and the activity.

Someone shows up at my door asking me to sponsor them for a swim they will be told I don't have any cash. Someone marketing they are going to clean up my neighbourhood litter wearing a costume and if I can sponsor them by the bag of litter which they will share photos of in the local facebook group then I'm interested and will be generous as I value the activity for the community and the size of the task. I don't care if the charity is for kidneys or cats, as I am not going to investigate on the door step if it is a worthwhile charity.

£5 a sack! 🤣 maybe 50p. Our local litter pickers as a group regularly pick up 20 bags or more in a morning!

I think that is right, and my original question was - does anyone have any inspiration in relation to what he could do?
I think most of the posters here are answering a different question.

I am just looking for ideas for things to do.

I mostly donate a small or larger amount depending on what the charity is, and how much I can afford at the time. What people are doing in the sponsored event is neither here nor there - they are mostly fun on some level or people would not get involved. But as I say it is interesting to hear the other views - we can't all be the same.