Matched funding – 1 Week to Donate

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Matt Betts

WILL YOU MATCH OUR FUNDING?

£1 COULD BECOME £4!!!

PLEASE ACT BEFORE 17th MAY

We at Living By Giving know that our supporters are incredibly generous, and that you want your donations to go as far as possible in helping those most in need.

Confident in this knowledge, we at Living By Giving have made an act of faith in supporting a major campaign by the highly respected development agency CAFOD.

As some of you will know, this Spring CAFOD has been raising money to make clean water available to people in some of the economically poorest parts of our globe, through its “Thirst For Change” campaign.

The brilliant thing about this campaign is that donations are being matched by the UK Government. Every pound donated by the public to CAFOD’s “Thirst For Change” campaign receives a further pound from the government.

Living By Giving has given £200 to CAFOD’s campaign, which means that, thanks to matched funding, £400 will go to help bringing clean water to people.

One in eight people in the world still don’t have access to clean water. Every twenty seconds a child dies because of dirty water.

Here at Living By Giving we are so confident in the support of our donors we believe that between you, you will match the £200 we’ve donated to CAFOD. If you donate a pound for our pound, government-matched funding will mean that ultimately four pounds will go to help CAFOD’s campaign.

If you, our Living By Giving supporters, match our £200 between you, then ultimately £800 will go towards this brilliant campaign.

THERE IS ONLY A WEEK LEFT OF MATCHED FUNDING AVAILABLE SO PLEASE DONATE NOW.

Please donate now via the CAFOD website.

You don’t need to tell Living By Giving that you’ve donated – we’re really confident that you’ll match us – but you might like to spread word of the campaign to friends, perhaps via Facebook.

Please give what you can now. Thank you for being such amazing supporters.

A Word of Welcome and Thanks

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Matt Betts

A word of welcome from our chairman…
THANK YOU! I want those to be the first words in our charity’s first newsletter, because without support and interest from people like you, Living By Giving simply would not exist. It is your charity, so again, THANK YOU!

It’s amazing to think that as a Trust we’re only a year old, but already, for a small charity, so much has been achieved. In our first twelve months we’ve enabled a child to spend time at Derian House Children’s Hospice in Lancashire, we’ve sponsored other sick children to go on holiday and supported the families of sick children in hospital. In London we’ve helped out at a soup kitchen and also helped to initiate a fund for those affected by this summer’ s riots. In addition, we helped to fund a student volunteering in a reconciliation project at the Dachau Memorial Site – that’s a diverse set of projects to be involved in!

And that’s how Living By Giving hopes to make a difference. There are many great charities and social projects out there, but rather than compete with them, we hope to build networks between us, and initiate new projects. Our aim is to advance the standard of life for all people in need; the poor, the disabled, the deprived. With such a large remit, we’ve decided to take a particular focus for three-years and our first cycle of projects (2010-13) is associated with young people – “Living By Giving… Young People New Experiences”.

At the grand old age of 32, I’m probably falling out of the bracket of ‘Young People’ myself, but I have to say that the new experience of becoming a Trustee has been wonderfully enriching and great fun. My fellow trustees – Matt Betts, Stephen Daly, Dail Maudsley and Sadie Vile – are all people I met in Lourdes, and our inspiration for setting up the trust was our life-changing experience of volunteering to help the sick and disabled.

So much in our society today encourages people to hold on to what they have got, and to hoard for an uncertain future. The world seems to promote a message of ‘Living By Taking’ – there is an unspoken fear that sharing your time, energy and resources with other people will leave you going without. In fact the opposite is true; our experiences as Trustees have proved that giving time and energy to others actually enriches you. Life is unpredictable, and so the best place to invest your resources is in the here and now, in relationships with other people. Giving really is the best way of living.

We have a number of exciting projects in the pipeline, and we’re looking to involve as many people as possible. We always need help with fundraising and publicity for events such as our first birthday party, and would appreciate anyone who can volunteer their time. If you’re interested in finding out more about how you can help or would like to get involved right now, please just get in touch with us. And if you have any suggestions for how we can be “Living By Giving…Young People New Experiences”, do let us know.

With sincerest thanks again for your help and support in our first year.

Johan Bergström-Allen, Chairman (2011 – 2012)

Read our newsletter here

Become part of our team!

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Matt Betts

Next month the Living by Giving Trust is proud to celebrate a year of registered charitable status! Our first cycle of projects (2010 – 2013) will be associated with the young and our theme is: ‘Living By Giving… Young People New Experiences’, more details of which will be published here soon.

As we grow as a charity in the UK we would like to set up a small fundraising committee of like-minded people to help us in our fundraising goals. If you would like to be a part of our fundraising committee, please email Dail Maudsley at Dail@livingbygivingtrust.com.

There are no specific requirements other than being willing to get stuck in, but if you’re also creative and resourceful we definitely want to hear from you!