Real stories

How top teamwork has helped us to raise thousands to fight dementia

Radyr and Morganstown volunteer fundraising group first formed in 2018. The local community association has an annual festival and that year they chose to support Alzheimer’s Society. 

A Society fundraiser came along to talk to us and we formed an informal group. Since then, it’s evolved and become more formal – there are currently eight members and we meet every couple of months. 

This is a close-knit community and there’s so much support for us.

That's because so many people have experience of dementia in their families or in their neighbourhood. 
 

Team collaboration

There are no bystanders in the group, we all muck in. 

Almost us of all have direct or indirect experience with dementia, so that’s the motivator. 

At the beginning of each year, we tend to set out a calendar for the year. 

We work out when is the best time to do particular activities and work around what other local organisations are doing, so we don’t compete with them. 

Planning activities

We organise a variety of regular events, including coffee mornings, beetle drives (where groups play a fast-moving pen-and-paper game with dice) and choir concerts. 

Around these events, we try to be creative too. 

We all bring different skills, experience and contacts. 

For example, some of the group are gifted crafters. One Christmas, they knitted covers for chocolate oranges that looked plum puddings. We must have sold 200 plus of these, which was amazing. 

One member’s husband used to work as a jeweller – we’ve made hundreds of pounds from donations of unwanted gold and silver, which he sells. 

As well as organising our own activities, we encourage other organisations such as local choirs and other community groups to fundraise for us. 

When we were first formed I spoke at local schools and, because of that, we were selected to receive profits from their enterprise weeks and non­-uniform days.  

Start small with fundraising

Our advice to other groups is start small, don’t think you have to do it all. Lean on existing groups, choirs, bands, schools and so on, who will support you in your adventure. 

Use local newsletters and social media to shout about what you’re doing. 

Get support from Alzheimer’s Society and they can help deal with the things that you might struggle with, such as branding. 

Looking back, if you’d said we’d raise a couple of thousand a year, we’d have been happy. So the idea of us reaching £100,000 is a huge milestone. We feel very proud.