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Have you ever had to raise sponsorship for a charity run and thought to yourself ‘there must be a more interesting and fun way to do this than knocking on neighbours doors and begging work colleagues to write their name and how much they are willing to give?’

Well, I may have found a way.

Whilst researching for the blog I came across The London Project. The group had just won an award and really wanted to pick it up, however to do so they would have to fly from Atlanta to London which would cost in the region of $10,000! So, they came up with an innovative way of raising the funds. They offered individuals the chance to buy an item for them to place in their suitcase to London, whether it be a rubber chicken, a chimp, a toilet seat or a feather boa.In return they would place the purchasers logo on an item and take a picture of it in front of a London landmark. Not only did they manage to hit their goal and go to London, they had a lot of fun in doing it:


A similar initiative was featured on Springwise not very long ago called ‘Needs for Sale’. There were many charities that artists Christine and Justin wanted to support, but couldn’t raise the funds to do so all by themselves. So, they decided to paint items that the specific charities may need, such as ‘Phone calls to our troops’ for the Red Cross and ‘A Nice Home’ for Habitat for Humanity, set a price and enabled people to donate the money to that particular charity. They’ve also set up a similar websites called Wants for Sale. These are paintings that they themselves as a couple would like to buy, for example a painting of ‘A Little Shopping Spree in SoHo’ is currently on sale for $2,500 and a picture of a cooker on fire has just been sold for $220 to pay for the couple to take cooking lessons.





So next time you want to raise some money, why not encourage people to donate by getting creative and giving them something in return for their money? You never know, it might be more fulfilling then pestering family and friends or taking a loan out for that trip to Las Vegas !

To read more about the London Project please visit here: http://www.thelondonproject.com/index.html
Needs for Sale: http://www.needsforsale.com/
Wants for Sale: http://www.wantsforsale.com/

- Kirsty Russell


Top picture: A painting of a 'Pop Art'/Andy Warhol style painting and on the right a photograph of Andy Warhol's famous Marilyn Monroe painting which is hanging in the Museum of Modern Art.
Picture Below: A painting of red and black gambling chips with a photograph of US dollars next to it. Thanks to justin_and_christine for publishing on Flickr under a Creative Commons license some rights reserved.

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Raising the Funds

Spend the morning of Monday March 22nd with renowned speaker and author Paul Sloane at the magnificent Glazier's Hall in London. Paul wrote The Innovative Leader and 18 other books on lateral thinking, innovation and leadership. Clients for his workshops include Bayer, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia and Shell.
The morning is a mixture of talks, interactive workshop modules and question and answer sessions. It is highly interactive and participative. You will learn practical creative thinking methods that you can put into immediate use for you and your team. It is ideal for busy executives who want to improve their personal effectiveness or to accelerate the creativity and innovation of their teams.

What will you learn as an individual?

* The 7 lateral habits of highly innovative leaders.
* 5 ways to generate radical ideas for your business.
* 3 ways to evaluate and select the best ideas.
* How to boost your personal creativity.
* How to turn creative thinking into new products and services.

What will you learn to benefit your organisation?

* What is impeding innovation in your organisation and actions you can take to fix this.
* How to build a culture of creative entrepreneurship.
* How to run dynamic and effective brainstorms.
* How to set the vision, goals and metrics for innovation in your business.
* How agile, innovative companies tackle the problems you face.

Agenda

9.30 - 9.45 Registration - Tea and Coffee
9.45 - 11.15 Innnovation and Lateral Thinking
11.15 - 11.30 Break - Networking, Tea and Coffee
11.30 - 12.40 Putting Innovation into Practice
12.40 End

If you want to take advantage of the early bird discount then you have just a few days left to book a place for you or a colleague on this workshop on Monday March 22nd. The seminar costs just £99 + VAT if you book by Feb 22. Thereafter it costs £150 + VAT. We send an invoice and you can pay by cheque, paypal or bank transfer. The price includes: 1. Seminar 2. Workbook 3. Refreshments.

For more information and details of how to book, please click here.

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Event: Brush Up On Your Lateral Thinking

What and When?

An event hosted by Stratford on District Council and Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council on 12th March 2010 at the Heritage Motor Centre, Banbury Road, Gaydon, Warwick, CV35 0BJ from 10.00 am to 4.00 pm.

Why?

Both Stratford and Solihull were awarded Beacon status for their work in respect of digital inclusion. However the work we are doing with our partners plays an essential part in the transformation of our Council services. We are using this event to share this work and demonstrate some of the key projects in respect of transforming service delivery and increasing digital inclusion around the needs of our customers.

Our partners which include the NHS, NHS Direct (West Midlands) Coventry and Wolverhampton Universities, Warwickshire Police, Volunteer Action, BT, the West Midlands Ambulance Trust, members of our LSP and Councils from across the West Midlands region, as well as key private sector suppliers will be present to demonstrate the work we are doing to improve the quality of life for our residents and workers and improve the experiences for visitors.

You will also have an opportunity to see the work we are doing with our communities in respect of increasing local participation and to provide our residents and communities with the tools and capabilities to solve their own problems.

The marketplace will have the following themes:-

·Promoting and enabling independent living

·Increasing public participation in the way services are delivered and developed

·Increasing opportunities for learning and increasing knowledge

·Strengthening the Local Economy and encouraging investment

There will be over 70 market stalls showcasing our work with officers on hand to provide advice and guidance to local authorities on our approaches, successes and lessons learned.

You will be able to meet with strategic leads from our councils and partners, elected members as well as the opportunity to discuss projects with development and delivery officers ranging from Total Place, front line service delivery improvements, community projects, deprivation mapping, self-managed community learning programmes, the Warwickshire Direct Partnership which uses a single CRM across all Councils in Warwickshire, through to our regional plans for providing a single regional solution in respect of the increase of migrant and transient workers and our joint work with universities in respect of e-tourism


We will showcase the work we are doing on increasing back office efficiencies and automation to reduce duplication. You will have the opportunity to see demonstrations on how we have automated certain key administrative systems (mileage, subsistence, annual leave, sickness) which have reduced administrative burdens significantly through to the plans we have for developing a single 'tell us once' system across all service areas, interactive on-line public participation meetings and the work that we have done using Lean Systems Thinking in areas such as Planning, Revenues and Benefits, Customer Services and life events.

The following link provides a snapshot of an earlier marketplace event held in 2008. Whilst this event was much smaller, the following provides a flavour of what you can expect:- http://blip.tv/file/1625240/

Highlighting Issues

The event will be covered by the Municipal Journal and Birmingham Post as we want to use the event to highlight the growing issues for rural areas in respect of skills gaps, poor connectivity and lack of knowledge about services against our plans to improve quality of life through our partnership plans and activities. Through this event we aim to :-

·Raise the profile of digital inclusion as a relevant topic to local authorities and their partners

·Position digital inclusion as relevant to CAA and the performance management framework

·Engage senior level representatives from local authorities, their partners and sector organisations to highlight the growing issues for rural areas in accessing services and increasing skills and job opportunities

·Highlight the importance of robust connectivity to rural economies and their development and prosperity.


Picture: A busy marketplace fruit stall surrounded by customers with thanks to alessandro_pinna for publishing on Flickr under a Creative Commons license some rights reserved.

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