Half Marathon Number arrived

[purplecat]

As usual I am doing this entirely for my own enjoyment. I'm therefore in two minds about setting up a fund-raising page. People do tend to ask about it, and I've done so in the past but it was quite nice not to be fund-raising when I did the Great North 10K last summer. On the other hand, I've raised in the region of £80 to £100 quid each time I've done this which is not to be sneezed at.

I don't know. I'm half minded to fund raise for All Out to continue evacuating people from Chechnya, but I can't do that through Just Giving and I get the impression people like Just Giving as a donation platform more than just randomly giving money to charity *dithers*.

I have also entered the ballot for the London marathon. There is, as I understand matters, about a 1 in 10 chance of getting a place, so this effectively puts the "are you going to do something crazy like run a marathon?" question into the hands of the gods.

Comments

[isis]

Woohoo, good luck with the half, and good luck getting into London (or not getting into London :-)

[purplecat]

Thanks!

[fififolle]

Well done you on all your runs, and exciting for a chance to do the London.
The trouble with JustGiving is that it makes it so easy, and for that I have to applaud them, but it's about damn time they capped their profits, lol!
On the other hand, giving to most charities isn't that hard online, so if you suggest a charity I will gladly make a donation in your name :)
I would give to AllOut but it says they've reached their goal, which is fab! Anyway, have a think and just say.

[purplecat]

I know a couple of other people running for charity in the same run, so I may just plug their charities for them...

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Justgiving definitely does seem to work for fundraising charities, but it is expensive, so i can see why some small charities prefer to avoid it. All Out seems like the kind of thing that people would support perhaps outside that umbrella though - do you know them otherwise?

[purplecat]

TBH, most of what I know about All Out is that the DreamWidth people recommended them during the recent headless-chicken-mass-LJ-exodus as a way that people concerned about Gay rights in Russia and Chechnya in particular might do something more positive than deleting their LJs (they put it more tactfully than that, obviously).

When I was idly pondering whether to do the charity thing this year I recalled them as a little known charity which was dealing with an urgent issue which a lot of people are concerned about but about which there is little constructive one can do from the UK (there was a march in Manchester, but I find it hard to imagine Putin being particularly impressed by the concept of the people of Manchester marching). Of course the fact that the issue is of such immediate urgency makes Justgiving completely useless since they hang onto the money for so long - although, obviously All Out, itself, has campaigns beyond the immediate crisis in Chechnya.

[liadt]

I'm so old fashioned I'd get people to write their sponsorship on a piece of lined paper.

[purplecat]

I know! The first year I did it I kind of vaguely waved in the direction of several charities, but the only one that got any money was the one I was able to set up a JustGiving page for. I think its the ease of the single place, the fact you can clearly mark it as sponsorship and... I don't know, I feeling that JustGiving is respectable?

Frankly, I'm amazed that people have been prepared to give charity approximately £290 for something I was going to do anyway.

[liadt]

Making money for charity is a nice add on for running:) I guess non-professional marathon running has become intrinsically bonded with charity raising.