The developmental side of fundraising

No, I'm not just talking about my patience.  Although it has taken some serious stretching just recently.  Six teenagers not responding to messages and not being very assertive is six times as annoying as the one I have permanently slothing on my couch.

Anyhooo, across the Christmas period I spent around 14 hours with one of these buckets, packing shopper's bags.  I did Morrison's, Sainsbury's and Waitrose.  I'm quite an expert now on the types that frequent, the types that give and those that don't.

Shall I tell you about the lady one night who let us pack 2 trolleys worth of shopping and take it to her car for her and didn't even let us keep the £1 from the trolleys - nope not a bean.

Or the charming man in Waitrose with only 2 bottles of champagne and a packet of smoked salmon that gave me a £5 note and an invite to spend Christmas with him.  Still got it, see! Still got it!!!!

 I also spent a fair old amount of time with these treasures:

It will all add up in the end, but it is such hard work and a constant drain on my time.

But as I was telling the manager at Waitrose what we had raised in her store, I needed to also explain to her why the opportunity to do this sort of thing is worth so much more than money:

At all the events we have done I had noticed the customers often asking the girls what they are fundraising for or what Girl Guides do. The customers talking to the girls is an important part of the day, it forced them to talk to strangers about Guiding and why they were fundraising.  It seems minor but actually when they come to university interviews or job interviews and someone says “why are you in Guiding?” or “what do you do in Guiding?” they will have a confidence head start. This is a really important a part of the challenge we are undertaking.

It's not just about the trip. It is a year's journey of planning, participation and development for the jailbreak team. 

It is a great challenge for me to be saying things like "You need to find a source for that", "You need to work out how you can make that happen" and then watch as absolutely nothing happens!  But sometimes they are coming up trumps and in the future they will remember these building blocks and it will help them to be the go-getters of the business world or the achievers in what they want to do with their lives.

But how can six girls, strangers to me, be worth such an effort?  I've pondered this a lot recently.  It's because there are Guiders all over the country world doing the same thing right now and it's not six girls, it's hundreds thousands of them.  Collectively we make a difference.