Why, Who and How?

A sponsored skydive for charity can be such a great way to raise funds for your favourite good cause, while giving you the experience of a lifetime to add to the glow you can feel from helping others.

Why?

Many very worth-while organisations work so hard to make life better for people who have problems. Sadly, a lot of those organisations get little or no government funding to carry out their wonderful work and are reliant on the generosity of the public.

That’s where you come in!

A skydive for charity is a high-profile sponsorship challenge which is sure to get your friends, work colleagues and family dipping deep into their pockets. Just the thrill of watching you jump out of an aircraft at 10,000 feet and come floating down on a parachute is worth every penny. The added bonus of supporting a really worthy cause at the same time is great!

Who?

The first thing to do is to choose your charity or good cause.

There are hundreds of them to pick from, but maybe there’s one that is particularly meaningful for you, perhaps because of something in your own life or the life of someone you know. Maybe there’s a local charity which just touches your heart.

If you don’t know who to jump for, have a look at our charity partners here. For whatever reason you want to skydive for charity, know that your efforts will be so very much appreciated.

How?

Once you’ve selected your charity, you need to contact them to ask for permission to jump for them.

They’ll probably not say no, but they may have some criteria for their fundraising which you’ll need to abide by. A lot of charities have had people skydive for them before and are familiar with the process of deposits and costs, but some may not be.

The charity also needs to be able to confirm to anyone that asks that you are indeed raising money for them. Very sadly, there are a few unscrupulous people out there who would take advantage to make themselves better off by collecting money under the guise of charity fundraising.

Paying the costs

The next thing is to book your jump and decide if you’re going to cover the jump costs yourself, giving all of your raised funds to the charity. If so, it’s easy – just pay the jump fee when you book the date! If not, there is an option to use part of the raised money to pay for the jump, so you actually get all that fun for free!

Advertise!

Make sure you let your local radio station, newspaper and other media know well in advance that you’re skydiving for charity.

Ask if you can go on the air to talk about it and get your local paper to run an article – or better still, before and after articles or broadcasts to publicise your jump beforehand and tell everyone how it went and how much you raised afterwards. That way, you can plug the jump and ask for sponsorship over a wider network than just the people you know. If it’s a local charity you’re sponsoring, that’s a great way to get more cash for them as local people will be familiar with it and will be keener to get involved.

Collecting the sponsorship money

There’s a couple of ways to do this.

You could use the traditional sponsorship sheet – you show it to people, tell them what you’re doing, and they sign up to sponsor you £X for doing the jump. Then, after the jump you’ll need to hunt them all out, collect the cash and get it to the charity.

A much easier way these days is to use one of the online fundraising sites like the ones discussed in this article from  the Moneysaving Expert site – but don’t run off there just yet… read to the end here first!!

You need to be careful to choose the right platform for your fundraising, as some take quite a chunk of the money you raise in fees. There aren’t any places that do it completely for nothing, as processing credit card payments alone costs money and you can’t expect these companies to cover the cost.

However, some sites also add profit for themselves on top and others charge a joining fee too, so you need to read the small print carefully before choosing.

Once you’ve settled on a collection site you can set up a page there, explaining what you’re doing and why. Then, you can send the link to it out to everyone you know, mention it in interviews and that radio broadcast and generally advertise it. People will go there to deposit their sponsorship money and you can set it up so that the site pays the charity direct when the jump is over. Done and dusted!

Now, all that’s left is for you to get in that aircraft, jump out safely strapped to your instructor and enjoy your jump!

For any more info on how to set up your amazing charity skydive or to book it, just give us a shout!