Blog by Marina Stedman – A summary of a case study about the Brighter Futures Radiotherapy Appeal which you can read in full here.
Every month, 284 people in Swindon and Wiltshire are given a diagnosis of cancer at Great Western Hospital. The National Radiotherapy Advisory Group recommends 45 minutes as the maximum time that patients should travel to places providing radiotherapy treatment, but Swindon and many areas within Wiltshire are among parts of the UK which exceed this time limit for many patients. Brighter Futures (the registered charity of Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust) wanted to raise money for a satellite radiotherapy centre in Swindon to cut travel time.
To do this, the Brighter Futures team needed to look for new ways to raise money. They had heard how grant-giver Greenham Trust was using The Good Exchange’s on-line matching platform to find suitable charities and good causes to fund and to manage and distribute their grants and how The Good Exchange also helped charities to raise awareness of their fundraising appeals and drive fundraising and donations through grant-makers’ match funding (where every one pound raised through fundraising or donations is matched to double the amount raised).
The Good Exchange platform has helped Brighter Futures to increase the profile of a worthy local cause that will provide a huge benefit to the people of Swindon. It has also enabled the Radiotherapy Appeal to reap the benefits from match funding, which is highly motivational, driving fundraisers to the fundraising site because they knew their money would be doubled. Match funding gives applicants the opportunity to reach their fundraising target more quickly by doubling donations (or more) to their projects, which has had a huge impact on the success of Brighter Futures’ Radiotherapy Appeal to date.
As at the end of July 2018, due to the efforts of the local community and with the support of many corporate partners and local community groups, Brighter Futures has raised almost £2.5 million of which £151,161 has been raised via The Good Exchange platform. 274 donors have raised £74,849 of which £72,500 has been matched by match funding. Aiming to complete the fundraising activity by the end of 2018, Brighter Futures is pushing to raise the final few hundred thousand pounds to turn its vision into a reality.
When the centre opens, cancer patients will finally be able to receive radiotherapy treatments closer to home and be spared long, daily trips to Oxford or even further away from their homes. In fact, the development of a local radiotherapy centre will mean that more than 13,000 patient journeys to receive radiotherapy treatment will be significantly shorter each year.
“The support of Greenham Trust via The Good Exchange has been instrumental in helping us to gather momentum for the Radiotherapy Appeal and we are so grateful for the matched funding support that the Trustees granted earlier in the year. It has been a great pleasure to work with Greenham Trust and The Good Exchange and we can’t thank them enough for all the support given to Brighter Futures. It has been a fantastic experience to be a partner on The Good Exchange platform and to work with its passionate team, who I know work hard to champion the campaign to bring radiotherapy services to Swindon.” Catherine Newman, head of fundraising at Brighter Futures
You can read the full story in the Resources section of our website here. The Good Exchange would like to than Jane Leighton, Major Gifts Manager and Catherine Newman, head of fundraising at Brighter Futures for their support in creating this case study.
