As everyone knows, particularly if you were watching BBC1 last Friday night, the 19th November 2010 was Children In Need day. By the end of the telethon, over £18,000,000 had been raised for the charity - a healthy figure given all the talk of austerity measures and job cuts. In 2009, the figure was just over £20 million raised on the night, and in 2008 almost £21m was raised. In fact, looking back to 2004, the average amount raised by the end of the telethon across the seven years is around £18.5m. So no obvious signs of people reining in their charitable giving or compassion fatigue?
FDC Law, Solicitors in Frome and Midsomer Norton, decided to run a fund-raising event this year. Four of our lawyers offered their time for free on Friday, 19th November to take will instructions from clients. The clients then paid our normal fee to Children In Need rather than to us. The lawyers were available for meetings all day and if they saw clients at, say, one will per hour, around £3,000-£3,500 could be raised for the charity.
So far so good.
So far so good.
By the end of the day we had raised just over £1,000 - and we were very pleased with the event. The clients and staff who took part all felt it was worthwhile and the charity will benefit. But why didn't we raise more?
There are a number of possibilities and what is more interesting is that take-up of the offer was significantly different between the two towns, Frome and Midsomer Norton, in which we ran it. Of the 28 clients who could have been seen on the day, 9 booked to see us. Is this a sign of belt-tightening in preparation for leaner times ahead? And if it is, why are people feeling the pinch more in one town than the other - towns only 10 miles apart?
Of course, it could just be that the marketing of the event needed to be better - and longer. If we run the event again next year with more adverts for a longer period and take-up is higher we may have our answer. But by that time, the economy may - hopefully - be moving in the right direction and people feeling more optimistic about the future.
As with so many things in life, only time will tell….