Black Friday Charity Raffle for Racing Welfare

Marten has always been keen to work with charities and make donations so I am always looking at what we can do to help. For some time now I have been keen to work with Racing Welfare and it’s been on my to do list for a while to set things in motion.

This year has been very busy with our Dark Horse Racing Club having three stable visits and a number of runs (including two wins), launching the new online shop enabling clients to get instant access to information, adjusting our subscription-based telephone services to ensure we offer the best value for our clients and finally now the final stage of development to our client database. Until this final stage is complete we are really busy in the office with data processing and I don’t have as much time as I would like to dedicate to marketing which in turn links in with our charity donations.

This week everywhere I look physically and virtually I see the words Black Friday. I feel a pressure to offer something. The issue I have is that I genuinely always make our prices the lowest I can. I haven’t increased the price of any service for over 24 years!

My husband worked somewhere once where they didn’t offer discounts they instead donated a percentage of that day’s sales to a chosen charity. I have always thought this is a lovely idea.

Then a couple of nights ago my daughter’s dance school were fundraising. Facebook friends were asked to pick a number between 1 – 50 and it was £1 for each one. The winning number was selected in the morning for a prize.

Basically, these two observations merged in my head overnight and today I rang someone Racing Welfare to speak about my idea. It’s a small start to our fundraising efforts but it’s a start none the less.

So here we go. We are offering raffle tickets. They are £2 each or three for £5 (thank you to Jodie for this price idea which I have a feeling will be popular).

We will put all the tickets into our jockey silks hat and on Monday will draw out seven winning tickets.

The prizes are as follows:

1 x copy of Jodie Standing’s Point To Point Recruits and two Weekend Cards

1 x copy of Marten Julians’ Dark Horses Jumps Guide and two Weekend Cards 

1 x copy of our Cheltenham Festival Bulletin Book and two Weekend Cards

1 x package consisting of Not Minding That It Hurts by Ian Carnaby, 1 x Jodie Standing’s Point To Point Recruits, 1 x Strictly Classified by Marten Julian and 1 x Why Cartmel by Rollo Pain and two Weekend Cards

2 x Subscriptions to our Weekend Card (five editions)

1 x £50 voucher to spend on our website

Raffle tickets can be purchased through our website or over the phone. Your raffle ticket number will be your online order number. If you order over the phone you will be assigned a number. If you buy three or even more (please do) we will enter your number as many times as required.

Earlier this year Marten asked me to look into charities who specialise in loneliness. Rather curiously when I spoke to Racing Welfare today and asked if there was a particular campaign I should mention they suggested I read about the work they do focussing on isolation and loneliness. I always believe in ‘signs’ so decided this was meant for us. With this in mind please take a moment to read on. Of course, if you are in a rush to buy your raffle tickets please pop to our shop now by clicking here and then come back later to read on.

I was interested to learn that Racing Welfare offers various events all around the country to bring people together and hopefully reduce social isolation. Although horse racing is a large and busy industry it’s easy to forget, while on a busy racecourse, that social isolation is a real problem. For example, a number of yards are in quiet areas and staff often start there having moved from their home environment and may not know anyone else. I like Racing Welfare ask for feedback to ensure they are offering the right kind of events that people want to attend and I was really pleased to read that they are continuing to increase the number of events they offer. They also offer educational events which are funded enabling racing staff to attend who may have been restricted by finances.

They don’t forget people who have retired from racing either! There are events held nationwide like coffee mornings, outings and holidays.

In January 2018 they launched a befriending service for people from the Horseracing industry. Again aimed at reducing social isolation and I am sure offering a vital service to people who are lonely or vulnerable. I love that they named this service Be Friendly as a nod to the continued support they receive from Sir Peter O’Sullevan’s Trust. 

If you haven’t heard of these style services this one is telephone-based where Befrienders are assigned to someone and call them for a chat. The Befrienders are trained and don’t just call once – they are available to make ongoing calls to not only reduce loneliness but also to touch base and see how things are.

What a wonderful idea and at this time of year it can be easy to forget there are people out there who aren’t rushed off their feet and receiving festive invites. Some people are sitting at home feeling alone and what a difference a call or an invite to a coffee morning could make. 

I hope that you agree Racing Welfare is going above and beyond to support people who quite often have given their lives to this sport for us to enjoy and be part of. 

I have only touched on one aspect of the work they do. If you would like to read more a link to their website is below but before you go don’t forget to buy one of our raffle tickets as 100% of the money you donate will go to them!

Links

Racing Welfare Click here

Racing Welfare (Be Friendly page) Click here

Our shop Click here

Our office phone number is 01539 741 007