7 Wonders in 7 Days to raise £111,000 in support of Sport Relief 2010

This is some very important news.

Regular readers of this blog will know that on Monday I held a closed invite Tweetup to thank supporters of 7 Wonders in 7 Days and members of Team 7 Wonders for their help with the campaign so far.

It was also an opportunity to share some of my fundraising plans for the campaign going forward after July’s decision to postpone the trip from September 2009 (9/09/09) to October 2010 (10/10/10) to allow enough time to involve more people in the campaign and raise the funds needed to go.

At Monday’s Thank you Tweetup, held at the Living Room on Deansgate, the venue for June’s Charity Auction and Tweetup, myself and the six five that could make it from Team 7 Wonders discussed my plans for 7 Wonders in 7 Days including the vision and strategy behind the campaign itself.

Thank You to All That Contributed

I’m really grateful to Julian Tait (@julianlstar), David Eaton (@_peak), Hwa Young Jung (@hwayoung) Josh R (@technicalfault) and Ricky Chotai (@ricky_chotai) for their frank questioning and fantastic ideas on Monday evening.

The discussion about the vision at the heart of 7 Wonders in 7 Days, which is to start an educational foundation in memory of my grandmother whose death from Alzheimer’s inspired the whole trip reminded me how important it is to “keep the main thing, the main thing”.

The Jessie Ekweozor Memorial Foundation is being created to do charitable work with disadvantaged young people both in the UK and in the Nigerian village where my grandmother lived most of her life.

Work on creating and registering this charitable foundation is underway.

Julian has extensive experience of starting charities.  His detailed questioning of how the foundation in memory of my gran was to be set up and what it was going to do made it apparent that setting up a charitable organisation is not for the faint hearted.

More importantly, the potentially time consuming process meant that it was possible that the charity may not be registered in time to raise funds for it through the trip in October 2010, meaning that the main reason for this year’s trip postponement could rear its ugly head again next year.

This realisation presented me with a tough decision to make.

I could decide to soldier on, shouldering the burden of raising funds for 7 Wonders in 7 Days and starting a charity from scratch (with some help from my parents, I must add)

or

I could select a ‘substitute charity’, one that had mutual aims to the educational foundation my parents envisioned in memory of my gran, and already existed.

I would then replace the yet-to-be-registered Jessie Ekweozor Memorial Foundation with this substitute charity in the line up of charities being supported by 7 Wonders in 7 Days, the aim being to raise £111,000 for this charity through the 7 Wonders in 7 Days trip instead.

Thanks to Josh for suggesting this.

A Tough Decision To Make

I spent a great deal of time thinking about this over the last 48 hours and have come to the decision that it is much wiser to select a new 7th Charity.

The reasoning behind this is to move as quickly as possible to the fundraising stage for 7 Wonders in 7 Days.

By this I mean moving on to being able to fund raise online for each of the charities using online donations platforms provided by the charities themselves or by sites like Just Giving.com.

Avoiding Embarrassment by Not Soldiering On

A very likely potential snag if I soldiered on with trying to create the charity as well as fundraise was the embarrassment of approaching corporate sponsors with a list of charities that is less than credible because one of them is not yet registered with the Charity Commission.

This was reason enough to choose a new, already established seventh charity.

Which Charity Did I Choose?

After some thought, I have picked Comic Relief as the  new 7th Charity and will be supporting them by raising £111,000 for in support of Sport Relief 2010.

Basically, I am replacing my grandmother’s yet to be created foundation with Comic Relief in the line up of the 7 charities I am fundraising for through 7 Wonders in 7 Days.

This decision allows me to go ahead with the trip in October 2010 even if my grandmother’s foundation is not yet registered by then.

Tough Decision Raises Profile of Foundation Being Created In Memory Of My Gran

Though a tough decision to make, the added benefit of pursuing the 7 Wonders in 7 Days challenge by raising £777,000 for 7 existing charities is that I’d be better equipped to fundraise and raise the profile of the foundation being created in memory of my gran after a successful 7 Wonders in 7 Days campaign.

I have contacted Sport Relief about my plans and will also be contacting the other 6 charities with details of the next stage of the 7 Wonders in 7 Days campaign.

The specific sporting activity I will be doing to raise funds for in support of Sports Relief via 7 Wonders in 7 Days is a weekly mile run at Manchester’s Sportcity running track which I will be blogging, Twittering about and occasionally YouTubing.

Though I once played football for the Women’s FA (I played for Harlow Town Women’s Football Club during my industrial placement year whilst studying Electronic Engineering at York University), I’m not a big fan of long distance running (aka running for the sake of running) so that’s going to be a challenge.

I’m also working on other fundraising plans for the other 6 charities.

Important Changes to Fundraising Plans

My fundraising for the 7 Wonders in 7 Days travel fund is also going to change after Monday’s discussions.

After a frank discussion about the way the 7 Wonders in 7 Days campaign appeared to some as a ‘7 Day Jolly’ it was suggested that I scrap the ‘Invite a Donor to join me on the trip idea’ and instead focus on finding a way to fund just me going through in kind donations, working with the airlines directly.

I’ll keep you posted on this and other plans.

In the mean time, expect to see the look of the 7 Wonders in 7 Days website change as the 7 charities I have chosen to support are given prominence in the design of the website.

I will also be changing much of the copy of the website to reflect these new plans.

What do you think?

Should I have ditched fundraising for the charity being started in memory of my gran so quickly?

Your comments, queries and questions welcomed as always.

UPDATE – 11th September 2009:

The Fundraising Team organising Sport Relief 2010 have been in touch and I’m pleased to say things are moving in an encouraging direction.

I am retrospectively changing the wording of ‘raising support for Sport Relief” in this blog post to ensure it is in keeping with how it should be presented.  Activity is being done ‘in support of Sport Relief 2010′.

I’m also replacing the Sport Relief logo with a substitute image (credited below) until I receive the official images for Sport Relief 2010.

Image Credit: Sport Relief.com MetaphorEvents.co.uk

Related posts:

1. 7 Wonders in 7 Days gets running for Sport Relief 2010 – Join Us!
2. Sign Up: 7 Wonders in 7 Days Sport Relief Mile
3. The Full Press Release: 7 Wonders in 7 Days Get Fit Run for Sport Relief
4. 7 Wonders in 7 Days and Comic Relief
5. Signatures Starting to Come In For the 7 Wonders in 7 Days T-Shirt

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Tags: @hwayoung, @julianlstar, @ricky_chotai, @technicalfault, @_peak, charity auction and tweetup, Comic Relief, David Eaton, Deansgate, Hwa Young Jung, Josh R, Julian Tait, Living Room, Manchester, Ricky Chotai, Sport Relief 2010, Team 7 Wonders