It’s been a while since I posted an update on fund-raising, so below is a chart showing our progress up to May. The fund to May stands at a fantastic £46,607 – almost half-way to our target. The last six months alone have brought in nearly £13,000.

Thanks to everyone for their fantastic support. We’ll be taking a break over the summer, but will be planning more activity for the Autumn term.

Just a reminder that our Ferret Racing evening takes place this Friday, 27th March.

The evening will take place in the school hall in Thame, commencing at 7.30pm. Tickets are £10, and include the price of a fish and chip supper. If you need a ticket then drop us an e-mail: stjosephsfund@googlemail.com

The last time we ran this event we raised £2000 for St Joseph’s Building Fund and we have high hopes for a similar total this year.

We have some fantastic prizes for race sponsors and winners, including two tickets for an executive box at Wasps Rugby Club, kindly donated by RB Dymott’s Builders.

Thanks very much to Booker Tate for their recent generous donation to St Joseph’s Thame Building Fund.

The business is “a global leader in the provision of investment, management and development services to the world of sugar, ethanol, bio-energy and other agribusiness projects”.

They are based in Church Road in Thame, and it’s great to have support from a local business.

I blogged a few weeks ago about the Waitrose Community Matters scheme, which is now running in the Thame store.

I’m very pleased to say that, thanks to everyone’s support (and their green tokens), Waitrose has made a donation of £320 to St Joseph’s Building Fund.

Thanks to Waitrose in Thame for selecting us to be one of the beneficiaries.

Friday March 27th: Ferret Racing

Place your bets on the feistiest ferret! A very popular evening when we’ve run this in the past (the last event raised £2000). Includes a tote betting service, fish and chip supper (and a bar!)

Saturday 18th April:  Easter Fun Day

A fun day out for all the family, including games, children’s tea party and an Easter Egg hunt.

11th February and 11th March: Coffee Mornings

Coffee mornings in support of St Joseph’s Building Fund have now been organised to take place once a month. Please come along for a chat, a coffee and a cake!

Coming soon… Gourmet Cookery Demonstration

Back by popular demand-an evening hosted by Mark Peregrine. Mark has worked for many talented chefs, including Raymond Blanc, at exquisite restaurants including L’Esperance (3 Michelin stars) and L’Oasis (3 Michelin stars) in France. The last time we ran an event with Mark tickets sold out within days.

Watch this space for details.

2008 was an excellent year for St Joseph’s Building Fund. Thanks so much to everyone who has shown the support—whether through the direct debit scheme, attending our events, sponsoring us, or through the Easyfundraising service.

The Building Fund total to the end of December now stands at an incredible £41,196.

During 2008 we raised a total of £22,393, which was a fantastic return-an increase of 48% compared with 2007. The Building Fund average monthly income is now nearly £1400. We’re planning to set ourselves a similar target for 2009 and hope we can count on your continued support.

I blogged a few weeks ago about the Waitrose Community Matters scheme.  I’m very pleased to say that St Joseph’s Building Fund has ben chosen this month as one of the beneficiaries.

As you may remember, each month the Thame Waitrose chooses three local causes to support. Each time you shop you get a small green token, which you can put in the box to support your chosen cause. At the end of the month Waitrose divide £1000 between the three causes – proportionate to the number of tokens they each receive.

So, every time you shop in Waitrose this month, remember to get a token and remember to support St Joseph’s Thame!

Originally uploaded by a shadow of my future self

Yesterday was St Joseph’s Thame annual Christmas Fete, and the Friends of St Joseph’s were kind enough to give the Building Fund space for a stall.

We decided to run a tombola, and at one point were nearly overrun with customers. Partly this was due to the high quality of the prizes which had been donated (thank you very much to everyone who contributed). Partly I think this is due to the attraction of a tombola.

According to dictionary.com, ‘tombola’ comes from the Italian ‘to tumble or fall’, which is a reference to the fact that the tickets are usually held in a rotating drum.

We decided to give our tombola a twist, with numbered balls (a la Lotto) hidden in a barrel. For £2 you could pick out five balls, and if the number on any ball ended in ‘0′ or ‘5′ you won a prize. The odds of winning a prize are pretty good (roughly one prize for every turn), so everyone went home happy.

Thanks to everyone’s support and generosity we managed to raise nearly £200 for the Building Fund.

The Government has announced that £1.75bn of funding has been approved building funds for hundreds of Primary schools in England. This is part of the Primary Capital Programme which is investing to rebuild or refurbish half of Primary schools by 2023.

Originally uploaded by JF Sebastian 

In total 41 local authorities have met all the Government’s requirements and will receive their allocated funding for at least the next two years. A further 92 local authorities have had their 2009-10 funding approved, but need to do more work before funding for 2010-11 will be released (Oxfordshire is among these). And finally, 15 local authorities haven’t met the guidelines and won’t receive their funding for the moment.

A full BBC News article about the funding is available here.

There is more detail on Oxfordshire’s approach to reveiwing the funding requirements here.

While this is clearly great news for the nation’s Primary Schools, many of which are in need of updating, it’s unlikely that St Joseph’s, Thame will benefit in the immediate future. We have to continue our fundraising efforts to ensure we’re in the best position to benefit when we have our chance.

Thanks for your continuing support.

Christmas Shopping
Originally uploaded by
andreasnilsson1976

It’s been a while since I blogged about Easyfundraising, so here’s a quick reminder about this great service. Easyfundraising carries links to all the major online retailers (Amazon, eBay, Tesco, Argos to name but a few). If you want to make a purchase online, then remember to go to Easyfundraising first, then click on the retailer where you want to shop.

Easyfundraising will collect a small percentage of your spend from the retailer (not from you!) and pass it on to St Joseph’s Building Fund.

Since we started using this service over a year ago we’ve raised more than £600 of valuable funds. And our biggest months were around Christmas when lots of people were obviously shopping online.

If you haven’t registered for this service then click on the link to go directly to the St Joseph’s Building Fund page.

In addition, to make things even more worthwhile, Easyfundraising have recently launched a new service called Pricechecker. In their own words:

Price Checker lets you compare thousands of products and prices from easyfundraising retailers and narrow your search by price and category, as well as seeing delivery options and donation amounts. When you have selected the deal that suits you best, click on the retailer link to visit their site and purchase your product. Your purchase will then generate a donation for your chosen cause.

Which means that not only can you save yourself money, but you can also maximise the donation to St Joseph’s Building Fund.

Happy shopping!