Fundraising and Events: adapting to digital amidst a pandemic

The pandemic has seen us shift our fundraising online in the form of online events and campaigns. We ran two match-funding campaigns over the summer — one for our holiday Play programmes and another for our Football Academy — which together raised more than £60,000. This ensured we could support children throughout the summer at our Play Centre and that our 130 football players could return to the pitches in September.

We’d like to thank everyone who donated to these campaigns with a special thank you to The Childhood Trust, Sport England and the Cairns Charitable Trust for acting as match-funders for the campaigns.

We’ll be running our final match-funding campaign of the year alongside our Christmas Market in November, giving you the chance to support all RPT’s programmes while having your donation doubled by our match-funders.

It’s no secret that the pandemic hit RPT’s fundraising hard. We’re more than 50% funded through our in-house events, which have all been cancelled due to the lockdown and ongoing social distancing measures.

While cancelling any of our events is the last resort, the safety and wellbeing of our supporters, volunteers, staff and all the teams who help at our events are paramount. All our major events (Brain Game, Portobello Dinner and Christmas Market) have been cancelled in their usual form and redesigned for online delivery.

Lockdown Quiz

Our Lockdown Quiz in June, our first ever online event, was a resounding success, engaging more than 1,500 people worldwide and raising almost £20,000 for our North Kensington programmes. The online quiz, sponsored by Strutt & Parker, was led by celebrity quizmasters Ian Hislop, Daisy Goodwin and Jenni Russell. You can watch a replay of the quiz here.

While the event isn’t a replacement for our much-loved Brain Game, it proved to be such a success that we’re planning a Christmas-time version to help close the funding gap caused by the pandemic.

Christmas Market & Portobello Dinner

Our Portobello Dinner auction dinner and our Christmas Market are both moving online this year, giving us a great opportunity to reach out to more potential supporters further afield.

Our Portobello Dinner At Home will take place on Tuesday 6 October and our Online Christmas Market will run from Sunday 15 November to Wednesday 18 November.

Please get in touch if you would like more information about either of these events, including how you can get involved.