The Prost80 Initiative:  Virtual Fundraising Ideas you could do in 80 days, hours, minutes or seconds!

The object of the Prost80 activities is:

  • To increase awareness that early detection helps over 80% of men survive prostate cancer in Scotland and to help increase the percentage of men surviving prostate cancer even further
  • Maintain and help increase awareness of prostate issues
  • To help raise funds to support Prostate Scotland’s awareness, information and support activities to support men and their families affected by prostate cancer and disease (there are now over 27,000 men in Scotland living with Prostate Cancer) and to help increase the survival rate even further to more than 80%

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What is virtual fundraising? Virtual fundraising is all about taking part in an activity no matter where you are, and whenever you can.  By sharing your activity online you’ll inspire your friends, family, colleagues or neighbours to sponsor you.  It’s a great way to interact with them online and keep in touch.  We’ve listed our suggestions for virtual fundraising activities below:

Head to our news pages for many more fantastic fundraising examples to inspire you!

There are other easy ways to support Prostate Scotland too, if you prefer not to undertake an activity

A big thank you for your support!

Sharing your activity online

The safest and easiest way currently to collect donations in through an online fundraising page and you can easily set up your fundraising page and share it with friends and family.

It is fairly straightforward to share a fundraising page in a social media post.  You can paste the page link onto an email, text message or social media post.  Or you can follow the links from the social media icons on your fundraising page.

In your social media and email, you can link to our website and tag Prostate Scotland on Facebook and on Twitter  to give your supporters more information about the work we undertake.

If you’re undertaking an active fundraising challenge, JustGiving has launched an integration with the free run and ride app Strava, so it’s easier to keep your family and friends updated and share your achievements – this will help you to receive encouragement and donations as you progress!Joe's Suie Classic Sportive

Staying Closer to Home? ‘Around Your World in 80’ Challenge

‘Your World’ could be your garden, house or flat –  80 hours – climbing up and down stairs could be the ascent of virtual Munros or Corbetts in your favourite locations.  Select a Munro, note the altitude and divide by the length of ‘Your World’ (stairs, for example), to discover how many times you need to walk it!

80 minutes of running could take you around a Half Marathon, 80 hours of walking might be a virtual visit to your favourite place in the UK, 80 hours of cycling in your locality or on the home trainer could be your virtual stab at John O’Groats to Lands End.

Ken, who had fundraised in a cycling challenge several years ago, decided to train to complete a double marathon cycle run around his local area in Edinburgh.  Ken was inspired by the efforts being made by other fundraisers in aid of the NHS, and in the 2.6 Challenge – and wanted to celebrate his birthday in this way. Ken set himself a target of £500, raised over £4,000 and became one of the top 3% of fundraisers on JustGiving in May, out of over 40,000 fundraisers across the country.

JustGiving has launched an integration with the free run and ride app Strava, so it’s easy to share your achievements and receive encouragement and donations as you progress.

Get Physical 80!

Get Physical 80!Challenge  yourself and a friend online, or a member of your household to a fitness activity every day for  one day or even 8 days: can you do 80 burpees, press-ups or dance routines?  Can you earn a donation for each activity – or do them all in your home, your street, local park or back garden in one day, Mini Olympic style?  The 2.6 Challenge from the organisers of the London Marathon, has loads of suggestions and inspiration from sporting stars if this type of challenge appeals to you.

You might find inspiration in Prostate Scotland’s exercise video.  At a time when people are spending much of their time at home, our free pre-recorded video advises people with prostate cancer how to exercise safely from the comfort of their own home.

Set up your fundraising page and share it with friends and family.  In your social media and email, you can link to our website and tag Prostate Scotland on Facebook and on Twitter

A big thank you for your support!

Other easy ways to support Prostate Scotland

Virtual Activities

Lockdown Locks

Have you grown your hair, moustache or beard during lockdown?  Can you get friends and family to sponsor you per centimetre to grow it, like our supporter Alex who grew a ponytail and raised £3,000?  To highlight our Prost80 campaign, could you grow it for 80 days?  Or are you ready to shave it all off – could you ask for donations?  You could even dye it bright blue to show your support for our cause!

RSAS Prostate Awareness Campaign

The fantastic moustache growing team from Rail Systems Alliance Scotland  raised funds and awareness of prostate cancer.  Their fundraising efforts complemented their workplace prostate awareness campaign throughout November.  The team set up a JustGiving page to collect donations and we were delighted to support them by providing them with prostate information packs to share.  We’re delighted the team raised the phenomenal sum of  £2,577.50 including Gift Aid to support our work!

Group Games

An inspired fundraising initiative organised by a group of Scottish Freemasons, of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, raised the tremendous sum of £1,585 in aid of our work.  The initiative, entitled ‘Time on our Hands’ saw each minute of one day being sold for £1, setting a grand prize of £500 for the winner in a prize draw, and a goal of raising £1,000 for our cause.  It’s important however, with an initiative of this type, that it is promoted privately only amongst members of your family, club or organisation, and not to the wider public.

Get Quizzical 80!

Rolling Hills Chorus Virtual QuizThe virtual quiz has really taken off as an ideal place to meet your family, friends, colleagues or community group online, even though there is no pub involved!  Why not meet virtually one evening for a fundraising quiz for 80 minutes, or 80 questions?  There’s a huge amount of resources online to give you ideas on how to organise one.  Wired magazine’s tips for creating a virtual pub quiz are a good place to start.  Our long term supporters Rolling Hills Chorus held a Virtual Pub Quiz on Zoom. Members of the chorus made voluntary donations and raised over £1,000.  And our favourite team name?  The Lockdownsmiths!

 

Other easy ways to support Prostate Scotland

Perform Prost80!

The Lockdown Session - Prostate Scotland

Put on a virtual concert, play, circus, puppet show, sketch show or live music night with the members of your household and ask for donations from your online audience.  Our supporter Bryan Marshall and his family held ‘the Lockdown Session:  Live from the Living Room’ – a musical performance in aid of Prostate Scotland streamed live on Facebook from their living room in Glasgow, with friends and family joining in from all over the world.  While their main aim was to raise awareness of our work, many in the audience headed to our website to make donations too.  The members of your audience don’t need a Facebook account to watch, as performances can be streamed live on a page which is open to the public and free of charge.  Your audience can comment in real time and even interact with each other by texting on screen.

Baking and Making!

Linda's cakes Prostate Scotland

With The Great British Bake Off as popular as ever, it’s great to remember how our supporter Linda challenged herself last April.  Linda took upThe 2.6 Challenge’ to bake 26 cakes in one day and raised £300 in aid of our work.  Her colleagues donated what they would otherwise have spent in a café.  Could you gather your friends or colleagues together online for a virtual coffee morning or afternoon tea?  Could you give an online baking demonstration of one of your favourite recipes and ask for a donation?

Another enterprising supporter made face masks to sell as a fundraiser and asked for donations in aid of our work.

We’d be delighted to hear from you with more virtual fundraising ideas  – we’d be grateful if you could take a couple of minutes to register your activity  so that we can support you in your fundraising. You can also contact us at info@prostatescotland.org.uk or on 0131 603 8664 or 0131 603 8660.

A big thank you for your support!  What we can achieve with your help

Other easy ways to support Prostate Scotland

We realise that the current situation has made life difficult for many people and families – and we totally understand if this is not a time that you can support us financially – there are many ways that you can still support us non financially:

Shopping online?

  • Head to easyfundraising.org.uk  It’s free to use and you can raise funds in aid of Prostate Scotland every time you shop online.  Go to easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/prostatescotland and create a free account.  You can shop with over 7,000 brands, including many high street names.  Prostate Scotland receives donations from the retailers you have shopped with.

Buying a greetings card?

Cards cost from £2.00 for an eCard plus your donation.  Printed cards cost from £2.50 plus your donation, plus postage.

It’s a card that supports our cause, and if our cause is important to your family, friend, colleague or loved one, it will be a card with an extra special touch.

Help us to raise awareness

Virtual background

You can show your support for Prostate Scotland when you are meeting on Zoom by replacing your background with our virtual background image hereZoom have produced a guide on how to do this

We’d be delighted to hear from you with more awareness raising ideas  – we’d be grateful if you could take a couple of minutes to register your activity  so that we can support you in your awareness raising.  You can also contact us at info@prostatescotland.org.uk or on 0131 603 8664 or 0131 603 8660.

A big thank you for your support!  What we can achieve with your help