Celebrities Dive into the Deep Blue Sea for Cancer Research

Samsung have teamed up with a Cancer Research fundraising event which hopes to raise £1,000,000 for the charity. Today, ten celebrities including Jenny Frost and  Ronan Keating started the 56 miles relay swim between Holyhead (Wales) and Dublin (Ireland), with Ronan taking the first plunge. They will complete the crossing in what is expected to take a total of '30-40 hours'. This crossing is 'three times the length of the English channel' where they will be up against more than the temperature of the water as the variety of sea life and choppy waters will make the task ahead of them even more challenging.

(Richard Branson was originally supposed to co-lead the team however due to the recent fire on his property he had to pull out)

Alongside the donations pledged through Cancer Research, Samsung have pledged an additional £3,500 for every mile the team swims. In addition, the swim will be documented on Samsung Galaxy S II smart phones and Galaxy 10.1 tablets. Not only is this a great way to help a wonderful charity which supports a disease that arguably affects everyone in one way or another, but it is also great exposure for the electronics giant. More and more companies are seeing the benefit of associating themselves with charities, especially celebrity driven campaigns which tend to be broadcast and documented on a wider scale allowing greater exposure. This in turn generates greater returns for Charities as these for-profit companies can help monetarily and help raise further awareness. All in all these are great partnership for both parties, which I believe we'll see more and more of.

We'll have to wait and see if Cancer Research successfully reach their goal, maybe Samsung's pledge will help push them over that threshold.

'An Apple a Day' for Great Ormond Street Hospital

Pink Lady have announced yet another fundraising effort for Great Ormond Street Hospital. They have provided an ongoing support for Great Ormond Street through their website and Facebook page with various previous campaigns encouraging donations to the the charity.

This time they are appealing to all those with a passion for food and photography to pick up their cameras and take a picture to be entered into up to four of nine categories available. There is one category however, where all proceeds will be donated to Great Ormond Street Hospital, aptly named 'An Apple a Day'. This category is asking for "the most exciting, creative, inventive, beautiful images of an apple", the applicant will be asked to donate £2 in order to submit a photo, all of which will be donated to Great Ormond Street, the picture will then be judged by a panel and the winner announced in April 2012.

 A partnership such as this can only be beneficial. This provides long term exposure for Great Ormond Street and the chance for Pink Lady to be associated with a widely recognised and supported charity. It'll be interesting to see what Pink Lady will do next and how it will benefit Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Big Brother Comes to the Aid of the British Red Cross

Big Brother has once again come to our screens and while we think back to previous years we may remember some of its more memorable sets and props that played a part in the show. Channel 4 is now giving us the chance to own one of these props as it sets out to auction off some of its most bizarre items with all proceeds being donated to the British Red Cross Disaster Fund.

When Channel 4 was broadcasting Big Brother, despite its many controversies, they had a large following with viewership often reaching into the millions, therefore this auction and sponsoship is set to be extremely beneficial for the British Red Cross and the Disaster fund, not only financially but in terms of awareness and exposure.

Bidding has already started with this particular item (Bob Righter) reaching 22 bids within its first day to reach its current bid of £200. All auctioneers have until 2nd September to bid on these items through their respective eBay pages in which time hundreds of bidders are expected to name their price.

Save the Children Teams up with Bob Marley

Save the Children have launched a new fundraising appeal by teaming up with an unlikely source, Bob Marley.  

The “I’m gonna be your friend” appeal is in aid of the famine currently taking place in East Africa. Save the Children have cleverly decided to use one of Bob Marley’s songs as the backdrop and theme of this campaign, clever, not only because his philosophy of hope, unity and love will help to encourage donations, but also because they're asking people to download his track ‘High Tide or Low Tide’ for £0.99 from ITunes, Amazon and various other music purchasing sites, where all sales go directly into the fundraising appeal. The downloaded track features a music video directed by Kevin McDonald which shows the conditions with which they are currently facing in East Africa. 

Alternatively the appeal homepage has the option of donating directly to the appeal, where they suggest donations of £10, $15, €15.

This appeal has already been spread through various forms of social media with Celebrities taking to Facebook and Twitter to raise awareness. Save the Children have used a large selection of social media and successfully associated their appeal with an icon that is synonymous with, as mentioned before, hope, unity and love. All these ingredients point towards the “I'm gonna be your friend” appeal  being set to for success, it'll be interesting to see if other charities start associating their future appeals with music.

Cheating Death & Raising Awareness for Gifts in Wills

August 2nd saw the live, social launch of the 'Remember a Charity' 2011 campaign, featuring stunt man Rocky Taylor. The campaign objective is to raise awareness and encourage more donations in the form of gifts in wills.

The charity aims to increase gifts in this fashion by 4% or £1bn and Taylor has signed up to a series of stunts in an attempt to raise the profile of the charity. Launching via a live Facebook stream on Tuesday evening Rocky performed the stunt which almost ended his life in 1985 on the set of 'Death Wish 3'.

An innovative social launch enabling viewers every possible opportunity to engage and interact during and after the filming. With an integrated social presence, Remember a Charity has a number of touch points online and it will be interesting to see how they adapt their social behaviour as the campaign develops.

Save the Children - Arsenal's First Global Charity Partner

Arsenal's pre-season match with New York Red Bulls kicked off the global partnership between the Premier League football team and multi-national charity. 

The partnership has no fixed term for the collaboration and there is no donation target in place. Both parties are looking at a long-term relationship and not just a charity of the year deal. The partnership will focus on educational initiatives with Arsenal already pledging support to "Families & Schools Together" (FAST) and Eat, Sleep, Learn, Play (ESLP) in the UK and currently deciding on which international initiatives to support.

This latest corporate tie-in for Save the Children bolsters their already impressive list which now includes; Lloyds Banking Group, Mothercare, Thorntons, Ikea and now Arsenal.

Charities Braced For Difficult Period Among Government Cuts

Recent Government decisions to cut back funding or withdraw it entirely in the voluntary sector is causing problems for more than 2,000 charities who are being forced to close services or lay-off staff. The report has been compiled by the union-backed anti-cuts campaign 'False Economy' and reveals that Children's and Young People charities will be the hardest hit with more than 380 organisations hit. 

The report estimates that £110 million will be removed from charities' bottom line this coming year alone. However, this analysis does not include information from major cities i.e. Manchester & Leeds etc, so this figure is likely to rise quite significantly once this has been taken into account.