Yorkshire Sikh Three Peaks
A great annual event held by a team in Yorkshire, which Liverpool Sikh Society joined in on, interested?
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Event Name
Yorkshire Sikh Three Peaks
Type of Event
Fundraiser
Number of weeks preparation time needed?
We started to promote the event 3 months prior to the date of the event (which is set by the Sikh Three Peaks), this allowed time for people to sign up interest, for us then to narrow down who were committed and then enough time for people to get equipment, for us to search for the best coach price and then collect money and book the coach. We started to fundraise 2 months prior.
Number of committee members needed?
We needed 3 members to help organise when it came to promoting, contacting and organising transport but on the day, we encouraged all our committee members to come and trek!
Any help from outside organisations needed?
Outside organisation was mostly down to the people at the Sikh Three Peaks https://sikhthreepeaks.com/ who did most of the hard work! We let them know 2 months in advance how many people we were expecting to bring from Liverpool. The team at STP run the challenge every year and every year seems to be bigger and even better! Not only do they organise the entire day including the route, the registration, they also provide refreshments including paroteh (with achaar!), chocolates and drinks (hot and cold) after every peak along the entire day!! and for all participants they give out prizes for all participants! The last few years the prizes have included an exclusive Sikh3Peaks mug (which a lot of us still cherish today), a certificate and a medal! The Sikh Three Peaks usually ask for £5 from each participant which all goes to a charity.
Stepwise guide to preparation in the run up to the event
1. we first made an event page to gather interest, to help give us a rough idea of how many people were interested. The event page included the following information: - the date and timings of the day - what to expect with regards to the challenge - what they will need with regards to equipment. - we provided a rough cost for travel for the day (always give an over estimate in price rather than under because you don’t want people upset if the price doubles) - also discuss the main reason is to fundraise, and explain which charity we will be donating to and why the cause is so important: ** this is probably one of the most things to promote as we found people are only committed when there's a cause that they feel is important - so know your charity! ** (you could also let your participants vote which charity we could collectively raise money for) - we told people to click ‘going’ on the Facebook event page if they were genuinely interested and set a deadline for this
2. once deadline past, we made a private Facebook group, we found out prices for coaches, we went to the university to ask for some money to subsidise transport cost and gave a more accurate cost.
3. we then started our fundraising - we made a collective JustGiving page we contacted the charity know who sent us t shirts for all the participants and they also promoted our just giving page
4. climbed the 3 peaks!
Guide to running the event on the day
As mentioned most of the running of event was done by the team at the Sikh Three Peaks. On the day, we sat off nice and early from Liverpool in the coach. We ensured someone took a register (we would make sure we had everyone’s contact numbers beforehand) Then we climbed the peaks! easy peasy!
Did you face any issues when planning or carrying out this event? How did you overcome these?
We initially found the cost of the event to be expensive due to transport, so we made sure we spent a long time (over a month) to find the cheapest coach company so we could get the best price. We also managed to get the university to subsidise the coach cost which was a major help, it ended up costing everyone £10 per person for the entire day, which was great! We could have promoted it more to people, there were a lot of people who said after that they would have loved to have gone! perhaps broadcast via university page, WhatsApp and fully utilise our social media platforms
What could you have improved upon and what would you do differently if you ran the event again?
I think personally we could have raised more money for charity, perhaps suggest a £100 fundraising aim for each participant to help maximise money we raised. We also could have done some fundraisers prior within Liverpool like a bake sale or bucketing. Also, we should have stressed importance for people to wear the right equipment including proper working boots as some people really struggled with trainers.
What are your top tips and take-home messages?
When it comes to fundraising challenges, there are some great organisations out there who are running some fantastic events! we can make their hard work even more worthwhile by bringing members from our universities! I would strongly recommend checking out https://sikhthreepeaks.com/ for information on their next challenge, usually every April/June and keep an eye out on charities like Khalsa Aid who are also organising similar charity events too!