It’s October, which means there’s only seven weeks to go until the start of the holiday season and our Winter Fundraiser!
If you are already thinking about your organisation’s holiday season campaign and fundraising activities over the festive period, we want to share more about why getting involved with Student Hubs’ campaign and providing donations or match funding would make a big difference.
How can I get involved?
We are looking for organisations to help our campaign by:
- Pledging to match fundraise for our campaign. This means you committing to match what we raise in donations throughout the campaign – our goal is to raise £1000 through individual donations, which means we are looking for organisations to pledge up to £1000 in match funding.
- Donating to the campaign. You may wish to simply donate to our work, and we can support with an invoice/BACS payment.
- Donating sales from tickets/memberships fees/event costs to us. Organisations, clubs, or individuals may want to donate sales from an event you run (e.g. a yoga session)
- Encouraging your staff to individually fundraise for us. Our JustGiving page makes it easy for individuals to sign up as fundraisers for us – why not do a sponsored bake or event, all in benefit of Student Hubs.
- Spreading the word and taking part. Connect us to individuals in your team who might be in charge of fundraising or donations; share the campaign and reach your professional networks; and get involved with our activities throughout the fundraiser period.
So why choose us as your holiday season charity of choice to donate and fundraise for?
Making a difference for young people
Young people have faced extraordinarily tough times through the pandemic, and the young people our activities reach are more likely to have faced difficulties as we aim to reach young people who may face disadvantages in their day-to-day life.
Last year our One Community Forum event focused on how our programmes could make a positive impact on young people’s educational attainment, and through the event we recognised the factors impacting this were multi-faceted: lost learning, digital exclusion, lack of motivation and confidence, lack of access for extracurricular opportunities.
The impact of the pandemic is long-term and we need your support to keep our activities sustainable, invest in new initiatives and engagement with our communities, and keep the momentum for these interventions alive.
100% of our Schools Plus (tutoring in schools) partners agreed that the near-to-peer (students being close in age to the pupils) tutoring relationship benefits their pupils, and 100% of our Schools Plus partners agreed that the programme added capacity to their organisation (from our 2020-21 impact data). Crucially, these interventions are completely free for schools to access: meaning we are able to enable access to opportunities for schools and young people that need it most.
Reach communities, university students, and our alumni network
The nature of our work means Student Hubs has a BIG reach, which equals bigger impact! Our activities always put community groups at the heart of our work, and in particular for our Winter campaign we are putting our youth programmes into the spotlight.
So by donating to our campaign, your are supporting and engaging:
- The young people Student Hubs reaches in our Bristol, Cambridge, Kingston, Southampton and Winchester communities through tutoring, school clubs, mentoring, STEM workshops and activity days.
- The university students who engage in our activities, opening their eyes to social issues faced locally, developing their employability skills, and supporting their skills for life.
- The alumni we’ve engaged over 10+ years, graduates and professionals with networks of their own, who might share your commitment (like us) to social change, youth impact, and community engagement.
Tell us how you want to be involved – make a bespoke partnership with us
As a small charity, we have the benefit of being able to be flexible in our partnerships and we want to hear what matters most to you in working with us. Get in touch with Fiona (details below) to have a chat about what your support could mean in practice and what benefits you could access from funding our campaign, including promoting your involvement with our work to our networks, getting involved with our students or communities, or engaging your staff or networks in other ways.
If you have any questions or would like to get involved, please contact Fiona Walsh, Partnerships and Development Director, at fiona.walsh@www.studenthubs.org. We are aiming to have match funders or involved organisations committed by Sunday 21st November, so get in touch ASAP if you want to be involved!
If you are an individual and want to take part in our Winter Fundraiser, we will be launching our event line up very shortly, so keep your eyes open for that update in November.