Facebook 'fans'* help Dogs Trust raise £1,500 in 24 hours

*They're really supporters, aren't they? Fans doesn't sound right!

Yesterday, Jacqui, Lo and I were looking at the Dogs Trust Facebook Page and thought, "wow, over 63,000 people supporting us now". Jacqui mused on how much could be done if all those people got involved to actively support us. So, on the spur of the moment, around 11am, we sent out a message:


The response was... amazing.

Within minutes, the donations started flooding in. Many gave £2, but the donations varied wildly according to how much people could spare; ultimately the average was about £4. All sorts of people took part: people overseas, people who already donate or sponsor, people who went on to become sponsors or members because of this, people who just thought it was as good idea and wanted to hit a high target.

What was brilliant was how many people posted to tell us why they'd donated. Others started a trend of donating from or on behalf of a specific dog, posting pictures which really gave everything a positive, happy feel. We left it up to the group to decide how often they wanted total updates; they were the ones doing the important bit, so they got to call the shots! In the end we let them know at around 5pm that we were near £1,000, and shortly after 11am this morning - around 24 hours after beginning - £1,500 had been raised.

If you think about it, that's almost a pound for every dog in our care.
...and the odd donation is still coming in.

Now we're getting feedback saying we should do this once a month! We're holding back on that as, although 370 people took part and made this their own, we don't want to alienate those on the page that choose to show support in different ways (or already donate anyway, or live overseas and support an animal charity where they are). But it's really heartening to think that many people would like to be asked for money every so often, and on an informal space like a social network, too.

One supporter even commented that doing it this way was 'more personal' than a standing order, which is definitely something to think about. The fact that it was easy as pie through PayPal probably didn't hurt either.

Although we left encouraging thank you messages and thanked as many people as possible individually, we're planning a special 'thank you' message for the page, and we're hoping to get some video or pictures we can add soon, showing what we do and why their donations are important to us.

Such a generous response to a spontaneous ask was amazingly good, and we're so humbled by the people who not only donated but kept this going, posting encouraging comments on ours and their own 'walls'.

If we were dogs, our tails would be wagging like crazy right now. As it is, what they've raised will set quite a few dog tails wagging!

Will you go walkies with Dogs Trust?

It's time to strap on the trainers and shake out your legs, but don't worry if, like me, the thought of running even 5km makes your muscles wobble and tears leak out of your eyes... Dogs Trust has come up with a fundraising event that gets everyone moving outdoors, but that doesn't require much time on the treadmill.

Waggy Walks will be taking place in October in ten locations across the UK. You don't even need a dog to take part! You just have to get creative.

You can dress up as a dog or bring along a toy dog if you don't have one of your own. Jacqui and I will be at the London Finsbury Park event and being cat owners are debating if we can convince our partners to walk on a collar and lead with us...! You can decide on the day whether you're up for the longer six-mile walk or shorter three-mile option. Find out more by visiting the Waggy Walks website.

The locations are: Bath, Belfast, Brighton, Cardiff, Coventry, Darlington, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and London.

If you're not able to come along to an event you can still take part and help Dogs Trust raise vital funds to care for thousands of dogs every year. You can sponsor the Mascot Dog, who still doesn't have a name. This three-legged wonder is an active fellow who'll be taking on the six-mile challenge in London with us. There is still time to contribute your ideas for his new title and we'll be very grateful for any pennies you can send his way,too.

Name That Dog! Waggy Walks mascot needs a name...

Who am I?

Meet ????.

Hi I’m the mascot dog for the 2009 Waggy Walks and I need name, can you help?

All we need you to do is email me with the name you think suits me.

I only have three legs but that won’t stop me from doing the six mile walk on Ocober 18th. I’m really looking forward to it, who wouldn’t be with the chance to meet some new doggy friends!

It's the dogs I’m doing it for – my friends at Dogs Trust who are still without a home.

I will be walking at the London Event in Finsbury Park along with many Dogs Trust staff and dogs and other walkers so I hope to see you all there.

If you are unable to take part in one of the ten walks around the country then please sponsor me. Every little helps Dogs Trust care for the 16,000 dogs or more that pass through their doors every year.

Head on over to my Just Giving page and sponsor me today

Dinner4Good: Come Dine With Me for Charity?

Recently Jacqui and I met Bryan Sergeant, an enthusiastic whirlwind of energy behind new fundraising service Dinner4Good. We were so impressed, we pretty much signed Dogs Trust up on the spot.

The idea behind Dinner4Good is that you have a dinner party (or tea party, barbeque or any other type of foodie hosted occasion) and instead of bringing a bottle or gift, guests make a donation to a charity of the host's choice. Dinner4Good's website does all the donation handling, Gift Aid - which means an extra 28p per £1 to the charity if you're a UK taxpayer - and even the invitations. All you need to do is throw a great party.

Here are some ideas we've been bouncing around the office for making your event go with a bang:

• Come Dine With Me: In these credit-crunchy times, more people are cooking at home and inviting friends over anyway. Why not take it a step further and mimic popular competitive dining TV show Come Dine With Me, making it into a competition? Instead of marking friends out of 10, you could give them a donation of £1 for every point, competing to earn the most for your chosen charities.

• Themes: Themes could be anything from clothes, to decor to foods from around the world. If you're organising a Dogs Trust themed party, get creative with cheap and cheerful decorations. We used (new and unused!) dog bowls for nibbles at our Dogs Trust Honours reception to great effect. Or if you have a bone-shaped cookie cutter, you could make some excellent shaped finger foods.
  
  Another option could be to have the do for your canine friends too - have a picnic in the park with your walking group and bring along a few extra homemade treats for the four-legged members of the group. The extra effort has got to be worth a few extra pennies in donations...
  
  
• Monthly challenges: If the first party is a roaring success, why not turn it into a regular event with the host chosing a new charity every month? It's cheaper than going out, just as much fun and you can know that while you're enjoying yourselves you're helping animals - or people - all over the world.
  

So why not hold a Dinner4Good party for Dogs Trust? You can have a fab time with your friends in the knowledge that just £2.50 donated by your guests can feed one of the dogs in our care for a week.

If you do host a party, let us know how it goes! We'd love photos and blog posts to inspire others with.

Canine Carer: My life as a dog in kennels!

If any 19-year-old told you they'd be spending the weekend hanging out in their house with friends, you probably wouldn't find it unusual. Unless of course that 'house' is a Dogs Trust kennel and their mates have four legs each...

Big-hearted canine carer Tom spends his days providing dedicated care to the residents of Dogs Trust Salisbury's kennels, but from the 18th to the 20th of July he'll be living like one of his charges!

He's appealing for sponsors to dig deep and support him as he spends 48 hours living the kennel life. To make the experience as authentic as possible, he'll sleep in an extra-large dog bed and eat only chicken and rice, similar to dogs on a speical diet. Though there'll be a few dog toys to keep him occupied, he won't be allowed his mobile phone or iPod.

Tom explains:

"I've always loved dogs, so I was very excited to start working at Dogs Trust last November. Since then, I've gained a greater appreciation of what stray and abandoned dogs experience while they're waiting for a new home. I came up with this idea to draw people's attention to what they go through and also to raise funds for the dogs in our care."

To sponsor Tom, just drop by his JustGiving page: http://www.justgiving.com/tomcliftonmoore/. He's set a target of £1,000, so please do feel free to post the appeal on your blog, Facebook page, Twitter feed or anywhere else you'd like.

I for one love this unusual idea, and hope Tom smashes his target as well as encouraging people to rehome a dog.

Good luck, Tom!

The Dogs Trust Retweet Challenge: Using Twitter to track a message and raise funds

The Dogs Trust Retweet Twitter Challenge aims to find out how far a tweet can travel in 72 hours by asking people to RT our simple message as well as raise funds for the thousands of dogs in our care.

When you make your donation place your username followed by the user name of the person you received the tweet from. e.g

@jacquidarlow RT from @dogstrust

Once you’ve completed the donation RT to your followers and don’t forget the #RTDT hashtag so we can follow the message around the Twittersphere.

The Tweet is

RT: If you donate to http://bit.ly/2sVXfe tell us there your @name and whose RT you saw. Top ten RTer’s win prizes. #RTDT

JustGiving’s minimum donation is £2, but we’ve hidden donation amounts on the page as this is about tthe number of @name mentions and a group total, not individual amounts.

Once the ball gets properly rolling, we’ll keep a leader board of the Top Ten most successful Retweeters – that’s whose RTs bring people to the donation page rather than how many times they do it! - right here on our blog and have a prize in store for all ten! That’s why we need to know who you heard about the challenge from.

If you're on Twitter, we'd really appreciate it if you get tweeting with this message, and if you're able to add a small donation to the pot then that would be brilliant too.

Thanks to those who have already shown their support and to all those who are interested in doing so.

Jo-Emma Larvin runs the Flora London Marathon for Dogs Trust!

Model Jo-Emma Larvin, also known as partner of boxing star Joe Calzaghe, has strapped on her trainers and chosen to donate the proceeds of her upcoming marathon run to Dogs Trust!

Here she is at one of our centres meeting one of the dogs the funds raised will be helping (more photos can be seen on the Dogs Trust Flickr stream):



You can visit Jo-Emma's fundraising page at JustGiving to lend your support and sponsorship. In the meantime, Jo-Emma will also be sending us the occasional blog post to mark her progress, so you can read about her efforts in her own words. Here's the first:

Well my training is certainly coming on. I've done up to a 16 mile run!! I can't believe I did it. In fact I can't believe I'm doing the marathon full stop! I've gone from only managing 2 miles in january to this, so I think I can pat myself on the back :-)

My legs feel do feel a bit like lead, but I do some stretching and I always eat straight away then I'm ok.

After meeting all the other runners when I did the half marathon at Silverstone and picking their brains for tips I've devised my own training plan. I'm doing a big run on the weekends and 2 little ones (6/7 miles) in the week.

I still take my lovely Sonny on loads of walks too. I actually think it's all the walking I've done with him over the 4 years I've had him that has given me a certain amount of stamina. Even days I don't feel like walking he looks at me with those eyes and I get going. Dogs are certainly great for fitness!!

I'm eating pretty much the same just adding more carbs to my meals. That part's easy for me as I love bread and potatoes etc I love eating big plates of mash and gravy.Yum! I keep getting the Lucozade sports drinks as well as I know thats what they give you at the marathon. I'm getting used to them now. Feel yuck today because had a late night and sooooo dont want to run today. I'm gonna have a gorgeous breakfast of 2 slices of brown toast, 1 with peanut butter, 1 with honey and banana mashed over both of em. Then I'll take Sonny for a walk and get ready for my run!

Good luck, Jo-Emma! Keep us posted.

You can still run for Dogs Trust in the Great Manchester Run!

A message from the lovely boys, Matt and Tristan, who work with our community fundraisers:

Dogs Trust has a handful of places left in the Great Manchester Run on 17th May.

With the deadline fast approaching (6th April!) and just a handful of places left, all we ask is for you to cover the cost of your place and raise some sponsorship. The cost of a place is £42 and the amount you raise is entirely up to you; what ever sponsorship you can muster will be gratefully received as we appreciate the event is not far away!

For more info, call 020 7837 0006 or email fundraiseforus@dogstrust.org.uk

Be in with a chance of winning up to £10,000 in the Great British Duck Race!

Oh, and you get to help Dogs Trust, too!

The Great British Duck Race is back, and you have the chance to adopt and race a duck for Dogs Trust. The winner of the race will also take home £10,000 with 30 great runner up prizes as well. You'd be forgiven for thinking it's fine to wait until closer to the race date, which is September 6th, but since there is a monthly prize draw taking place every month from now until then you'll give yourself more chances to win by adopting a duck early!

Best of all, your duck is re-entered for the draw automatically every month, so the earlier you adopt, the more chances you have to win.

You can adopt a duck, which will be raced against others down Molesey Lock, for just £2. Dogs Trust gets £1 with the NSPCC, which is the Duck Race's chosen main charity, getting the other half. So by entering you'll definitely be helping two charities as well as getting the chance to line your own pockets as well (no bad thing in this climate, I think you'll agree!).

Just head over to the Dogs Trust Duck Race page to adopt your duck, and good luck in the draws!

K9 Knitters take up needles to help dogs

The following information was sent to us from Carrie at K9 Knitters. Her cause is, clearly, very close to our hearts because she is a dedicated fundraiser for both Dogs Trust and other canine charities. Here's what she has to say:

"We are a nationwide knitting group who create hand made dog coats for sale, and 100% of the proceeds go to dog rescue charities. We support two charities every year - Dogs Trust is the 'constant' who we support every year, and we have a 'smaller' charity that we rotate every year. Customers decide which of the two charities their donation goes to - it works out at broadly 50/50 each year. We've raised over £7500 in total since we started in 2006.

"We regularly have a stall at events at the Sadberge Dogs Trust centre, and also send coats for fundraising events to any other of the centres who ask for them. However, most of our sales come from the website. Would any Dogs Trust supporters be interested in a buying a warm woolly winter coat for their dog and helping less fortunate dogs at the same time?"

K9Knitters Facts

- K9 Rescue Knitting Club was founded in early 2006 by Jill Danson and Carrie Warr - who didn't know each other from adam, other than via a rescue dog chat forum on the internet!

- we have raised over £7500 since October 2006. 100% of proceeds go to dog rescue charities - and all wool/other materials are donated by either our knitters or supporters.

- Our nominated rescues for 2008 are Dogs Trust and Ashbourne Animal Welfare in Derbyshire. Dogs Trust benefit every year; we rotate the 'smaller' charity every January. Previous charities who benefitted were The Oldies Club and Many Tears (in Wales).

- Over 500 coats have been sold via the website

- Over 1000 coats have been donated direct to rescues for their residents and/or their fundraising

- Over 700 knitters are registered with us

- Most popular designs are: Dennis the Menace; Dogasaurus

- One lady once bought a coat for her cat

- Our most northerly customers are in Orkney

- Our most southerly customers are in Cyprus

- Our furthest afield customers are in Maryland , USA . (We've also offered a couple of coats to the White House dogs in Washington - Barney and Miss Beazley. But we're waiting to hear back from them!)

- Our best dressed customer is Brummie the Yorkshire Terrier in London who has 10 k9knitters coats

- We've made coats for a couple of 3-legged dogs

- One of the rescue centres to whom we sent a batch of coats used one to help keep a newly orphaned lamb warm!

- We once had a donation of 2500 pairs of knitting needles! (I know - I counted them all!)

- We always welcome donations of wool - which will be put to very good use.



So if your pooch is shivering and you're looking for a good way to keep him (or a cat or a lamb, apparently!) warm through the winter, you know which website to visit!