Unit Leader (who is also Division Commissioner) arranged for us to have a stall at a nearby village fête to raise funds for the division. This is something we don’t do a lot – usually fundraising is for units and districts – but she’s keen and working hard to make us feel more unified and the proceeds will be spent on something that helps that.
I went along to help, along with our District Commissioner and UL’s mother and sister. I felt both very unprepared and very loved: I rocked up on my bike in uniform with just a banana to sustain me through the day, but the others had brought chairs, packed lunches, a thermos of coffee, mugs, a bottle of squash, and beakers for everyone. That’s my guiding family.
We put up our new gazebo (purchased with Sainsbury’s Active Kids vouchers, and extremely fast and simple to pitch) and filled it with tables, signs (some showing the old branding; naughty of us, I know), promotional materials, a tombola, guess the number of sweets in the jar, and miscellaneous items to sell.
The crowds arrived, and we had a steady trickle of people passing our stall all afternoon. The most popular thing by far was the tombola. It’s simple to run and it’s not very original, but it works. The other things we had to push a bit more, but by walking around the fête a bit with the jar of sweets, we managed to fill a page with guesses. Altogether we raised a very respectable £215.
We also had some good chats with past, present and hopefully future members of Girlguiding, and with anyone else who was vaguely interested.
I enjoyed looking round the other stalls and soaking up the great British village fête atmosphere. I bought some future birthday cards, threw cricket balls at crockery, admired the entries for the photography and miniature garden competitions, and ate some tasty home-made cake. We also had a good view of the singing, dancing and hoop-spinning going on in the performing area.
Guiding with a Smile 
I’m intrigued… what in the world is a tombola?
A fundraising staple! Maybe you call it a different name? You need lots of little prizes (e.g. sweets, groceries, toiletries, nick nacks, anything really) and a book of raffle tickets (the sort that has two of each number). Go through the book and stick a ticket with a number ending in 0 or 5 to each prize, and put the corresponding ticket in a bucket, folded up. Put all the other tickets in the bucket, folded up, without sticking any to prizes.
At your stall, lay out all your prizes with tickets on so people can see what they might win. Charge people to pick tickets out of the bucket (the going rate here is £1 for 5 tickets). If they pull out a number ending in 0 or 5, they’re a winner and you find the corresponding prize and give it to them. If they get any other number, sorry, they haven’t won anything, and you can throw the losing tickets away (not back into the bucket, otherwise the odds get too unfavourable!).