2020 Fundraising

2020 has been a very unusual year for 3rd Portchester Scouts, for a number of reasons. Hopefully we have done our best to help support 3rd Portchester Scouts both during 2020 and also setting it up to be in a strong position for 2021 when we hope the pressure of the current Covid-19 pandemic may have eased off.

Please feel free to take the time to find out more about our fundraising efforts during 2020.

New Leadership

At the start of the year Trish Reid stepped down as Group Scout Leader having led the Group through the first 20 years of this millennium which is no small fete and left a very big role to fill. Peter Leach took over as the new Group Scout Leader took post on the 10th February 2020. Peter has been with the Group for 5 years and during this period has got to know the Group very well. Peter also brings with him about 12 years of Scouting experience along with volunteering experience from St John Ambulance where he held a variety of different volunteer roles.

1 month later the Group Scout Leader Team was expanded to also include 3 new Assistant Group Scout Leaders (Roy Gray, Claire Colley & Kate Colley). All 3 of these individuals are home grown talent having started their Scouting pathways with 3rd Portchester Scouts and bring a huge range of skills and knowledge to the team.

The Group also welcome Councillor Lee Mason as its new Chairperson. We are very thankful to Councillor Lee Mason for his continued support and we are certain that if he was able to chair Portsmouth City Council meetings when he was Lord Mayor during 2018-2019 that he should be able to keep us under control.

Covid-19

Probably one of the biggest challenges Scouting will ever see in our life time. On Tuesday 17th March 2020 saw all Scouting activities stop with immediate effect to try and slow down the spread of this new global pandemic. As a Group we were very quick to adjust to virtual Scouting using technology such as Zoom enabling us to resume Scouting, although not in a way it had ever taken place before.

The ability to resume a limited amount of face to face activities was made possible in early July 2020, and our first socially distanced activities took place on Monday 13th July 2020. To do this we had to have lots of things in place to keep everyone safe, this included things such as extra cleaning, hand washing, social distancing, limiting numbers, etc. As you can imagine this wasn't easy but we continued working hard and were able to do a large number of activities such as cycle rides, hikes, kayaking, pulling, dinghy sailing, etc. Unfortunately we were unable to do any residential experiences so all of summer camps had to be cancelled.

Impact on Fundraising

This has had a threefold affect on our finances in the following ways:

  1. A reduction in income from our subscription charges due to a reduction in membership numbers, and also financially supporting those families who had been affected the most by a reduction in the subscription charge.

  2. The loss of our traditional fundraising activities such as the Portchester Gala, fundraising events (e.g. meals), etc.

  3. An increase in cost of cleaning materials.

New Fundraising Ideas

While with everything going on it might have been hard to look for the glimmer of hope as the current situation looked like it was chucking it down (metaphorically), we at 3rd Portchester Scouts did our best to follow the rainbow and the support we received along the way has been truly amazing and we can not thank everyone enough who has supported us.

Grant Applications

At the end of 2019, we submitted a number of grant applications after having done a review of our 12' Dinghy Fleet. At the start of 2020 we were very thankful to get 3 successful responses from the following 3 funds/organisations:

Through these 3 grants and some of our funds we have been able to secure 6 new 12' dinghies that can be used for single sculling practise, solo dinghy sailing and double handed dinghy sailing. These craft were delivered during the first UK lockdown and were instrumental to our socially distanced activities during the summer of 2020 and were one of the first craft to go afloat.

A huge thank you to Holly Walsh for her time in putting together the grant applications regarding funds for the 12' Dinghy Fleet.

Later in 2020, we once again successful in applying to the RN Admiralty Fund, and this along with some of the money raised through our Crowdfunder campaign allowed us to progress forward with Phase 1A of our kayak project. These kayaks will be collected early 2021 ahead of the boating season and will open up new opportunities within the Group in particular as they add a new touring capability that we have not had before.

Crowdfunder

With a noticeable reduction in our income for 2020 and the inability to run our traditional type of fundraising activities, when we received an email from British Canoeing about the possibility of running an online fundraising campaign to help support our Scout Group we collectively rose to the challenge.

This project ran for 8 weeks and during this time we offered a variety of rewards, such as:

  • Entry to Quizzes

  • Bingo tickets

  • Retro game show night

  • Sponsored runs

  • Dispersal of old equipment

  • Naming of boats

  • Boating opportunities

  • Christmas craft

  • Badge sewing

  • Tickets to future events

  • Vouchers for local business such as Twells Traditional Butcher

  • Wall of Thanks

Crowdfunder were truly amazing to work with and we can not thank them enough. They held our hand and supported us all the way from putting our project together to the very end. There easy to use website also helped collate all the details that we need to claim a further £1,180 of Gift Aid on top of the £10,212 that we raised through Crowdfunder. During the current pandemic there were also no fees to us as a UK charity for using this service.

Once again we would like to thank Sports England who also supported this Crowdfunder project putting up £5,000 of extra funding which really did help us reach our target amount.

The funds raised through Crowdfunder have so far gone to support the following projects at 3rd Portchester, along with also helping to fill the forecasted income deficit during 2020.

  • Suzuki 6HP Outboard engine for 2nd Drascombe Lugger

  • Phase 1A of our kayak project

  • Noise Absorbing Panels at HQ, and wow what a difference these make

  • Public Access Defibrillator AED

For further information on our Crowdfunder project please visit:

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/3rd-portchester-scouts

Digital Transformation

With having to transform the way in which we operated at such a pace it can not be forgotten about some of the donations in kind that we have benefited from many technology companies.

  • Zoom - Very kindly donated one paid license to all Scout Groups to use during this pandemic. This has now been extended in to 2021

  • Microsoft Office 365 E1 Licence - We now use this a variety of services such as emails, SharePoint, OneDrive, MS Office products, etc.

  • Google for Nonprofit - We primarily use this for hosting of things such as this website, public documents but we also get access to other services such as Google Forms, Google My Business, etc.

  • Black and Yellow Ltd - Richard Harvey who is the Managing Director for this company very kindly gave up his time to get us going with Microsoft Office 365. Not only did he do this for free for 3rd Portchester Scouts, but many other Scouts Groups, Districts & Counties across the UK enabling them to get started quickly with Virtual Scouting.

Race Round the World

With so much support given to 3rd Portchester Scouts already in 2020 we are currently supporting a national fundraising campaign. To find out more and get involved with this activity please visit:

Race Round the World

Online Fundraising

This continues to go well for the Group. Across easyfundraising & AmazonSmile we were able to raise around £640 for the Group during 2020 through your kind support.

Gift Aid

We are very thankful for all the kind parents who also complete Gift Aid Declarations as this enables us to claim an extra 25% back from the Government for those parents who are income tax payers allow us to claim an extra £42 per young person over the course of the year which helps enable us to keep our costs down as low as possible.

For more information on Gift Aid.