More a case of am I being silly- to want to raise money for Children's ward?

[Naive]

Our Children's Ward has saved the live of my DS and two of my nieces. We live in a town and the next hospital is over an hour away.

They keep trying to close our Children's Ward but I don't know what we'd do without it. They have succeeded in closing down some beds and the other day I saw them turn a very poorly child away.

I would like to raise money for the ward, am I just being ridiculous? It probably just won't make a dent will it? It is just one of these sort of fairytale fantasies I have about improving things?

If it is do-able, what sort of things could I do to raise money?

I was thinking maybe:
Charity Party/ Auction
Sponsored things?

What else?

Do it! From what I can gather with the NHS every penny counts and you will be setting a fantastic example for your kids.

How about all those things? No one event will raise all the money. Raising money can be hard, but where would you be if they closed the ward down?

Contact the hospital first, and tell them what you wish to do. Advertising any auction/event through the hospital will make it sound far more legitimate, and would encourage other people to take part.

Being realistic, if there is a PCT long term plan to close the ward any fund raising will make no difference.

How about if we did a petition and sent it to the government or something?

create a facebook petition which can be sent to government?

set up a table in the local town and ask people to sign to save the hospital childrens ward?

Fundraising sounds like a great plan. Even if there are plans to close the ward they would still be able to use the money - they could buy things that could be moved to the main hopital if they could.
Or thinking laterally there might be other aspects of your local paediatric service that might not get as much charity money as the inpatient ward - I know that the paediatric ward in my local hospital (and the cancer service) are always getting donations, but there must be other equally desrving causes that never get anything - for example maybe your local community paediatric service would have stuff they would love to get? And they will still be there whatever happens to the ward.

Just a thought but when i wanted to do this to say thankyou to the wards that helped my daughter- they were not under threat of closure- i was told that any financial donations go into the main hospital pot so to speak and if you want it to benefit a specific ward then its better to donate gifts- i raised money for our local NICU and childrens cardiac ward and went to Toysrus and spent the money i raised on toys,baby mobiles and swings etc.

But of course thats no good if they are determined to close the ward-how sad

get a major local firm on board to help - make it THEIR "community/charity project" for the year, all that free publicity for them.......

if you are wanting to organise a raffle, ALL the major stores/supermarkets will donate vouchers/raffle prize to the value of £x (often £10 or £20 a time) if you write and ask them. We get them every time for school PTA fairs etc, probably be even more generous for YOUR cause

raising money will not help... tohusands of pounds are nedded every year, not to mention new equipment , servicing costs, staff salaries, etc - the only good chance yuo have to succeed is to raise the profile of the hopsital and the impending ward closure .Only major political embarrassment will stop it.

Of course you can do something and you should if everyone did something it would make a massivve difference and you can too.

you have to be careful about raising money.

I used to work for a major organization who raised lots of money for lots of causes, and one year they were aiming to raise money for the local scbu. We were told that if we raise money for them, then that amount would be taken out of their budget for the following year, so they wouldn't actually get any extra money iyswim.

You would have to raise millions to keep a ward open, and running, for the foreseeable future.