Brunch, bake and quiz - Kayleigh's fundraisers!

I’m Kayleigh. I’m 25 and I’m running the London Marathon for VICTA in 2026!

Running a marathon has always been on my bucket list and with this year’s marathon being on 26th April – running 26 miles in the year 2026, when I turn 26, feels like it was meant to be! I couldn’t be doing it for a better cause, my uncle was blind and I grew up with him living down the road so witnessed first hand the struggles he went through. I have now raised £3,152 and this is how I did it…

Brunch fundraiser

One thing me and my friends love to do is catch up during a good bottomless brunch, and playing drinking games at the pub, so I thought there must be a way to turn this into a fundraiser for an amazing cause! So I decided to do a bottomless brunch for VICTA.

First I had to find a venue and luckily my friend’s mum stepped in with a few ideas, we picked a venue, got a list of who wanted to come and then we came up with the idea to make it a “Ryanair” style brunch, so if you wanted to sit next to your friend then you had the pay £3 for example and the idea grew from there. I created an ‘in flight menu’ and everyone their own ‘plane’ ticket and ‘passport’ to really add to the flight vibe. I’m lucky enough to work at a print company so was able to design everything and print everything myself! I was researching and looking up ideas for drinking game rules and the kind of games me and my friends like to play to incorporate those themes and ideas into ideas for the brunch. I had purchasable rule cards that you could implement on the table and everyone would then have to follow that rule, I also had a seatbelt sign that you could donate to have control over, which meant when you held up the sign everyone had to sit down and drink while you did so! There was lots of googling and messaging with my ‘in flight crew’ (my mum, my friend’s mum) who were both helping me organise the event, I wanted to make sure that I had gotten the vibe right as I had a few of my friend groups and family friend groups come together so we had a range of ages to tailor towards and I wanted to make sure everyone had fun.

The highlight of the fundraiser was everyone playing the drinking games that we created. We had an option on the in-flight menu where you could buy a rule card and as the brunch went on and the drinks were flowing it got sillier and sillier! Everyone loved all the little details that I had worked on and put together and we raised £210.

Something I would’ve changed is that, I had QR codes printed on boards so that people could donate to buy rules and participate in the in flight menu, and this worked really well for maybe the first hour then the QR codes had stopped working and wouldn’t work for some people, so for my next fundraiser I’ll have to workshop a new solution to make things work smoothly.

It was so much fun to run and organise, as well as take part in. I would definitely recommend other people hosting a similar event! What was also great is that it’s completely customisable to you and your friend group, we spent the whole time laughing!

Bake sale fundraiser

Me, my mum and sister have always been into baking, as soon as I got the email accepting my place to run in the marathon for VICTA I knew I wanted to do a bake sale. I decided to ask my boss if I could host it at work and they agreed and chose to carry out my bake sale a few days before my birthday.

I cleared my calendar the week before to get baking, I decided to bake my signature brownies, as I have brought these in in the past and they have gone down very well! I chose to bring in 2 trays of original plain brownies, 3 trays of the fruit and nut brownies and then 3 trays of chocolate orange brownies, then it was time to do the maths on all of the ingredients that I would need, how much they would cost, then how much it would cost per brownie, then how long it would take me to make each batch. This was the maths that made me procrastinate the bake sale as it felt very overwhelming but I cracked on with planning it.

Once I had my prices worked out I created posters that I put up around my work advertising when I would be hosting my bake sale. It was something I had soft launched as I had placed posters around my work advertising that I was raising money for VICTA and running the marathon for them! So I put my posters around work and spread the word. I then designed a table cloth, ordered some paper bags and got my pricelist boards printed as well as little stickers I had designed. I also had to workshop the hiccup I had from the previous fundraiser, what was going to be the easiest way to receive the money, I had researched a bit online what would be the best and most cost effective way, since the QR code stopped working on my last fundraiser, my mum had seen that I could get a sum up card machine for £15 and I thought that seemed like the most obvious answer. At this point I also had another fundraiser in the works so thought this would be perfect!

One week leading up to my bake sale I had one of my colleagues Kasia offer to bake her walnut and honey cake for my bake sale, and then on the day of my bake sale my colleague Katrina had said her daughter had baked some shortbread hearts for me to sell too which was so kind of them both and I was so grateful.

I raised an amazing £300, must be why the classic fundraisers are the best! My colleague Jim at the end of the day bought everything that was left to make sure I sold out and I was so touched by his kind gesture, The sum up machine was revolutionary and made everything so smooth sailing and would definitely recommend it for anyone doing something similar.

Pub quiz fundraiser

If there’s one place me and my friends love to catch up its at our local pub and a pub quiz is something I’ve always said I’d love to do. I had the idea to create a pub quiz fundraiser as this is something I had been to before myself and it was so much fun and I thought it was a great idea to invite everyone along as my previous fundraisers had been targeted to certain groups of people in my life for example my friends, my family friends and people from work, I wanted a big final fundraiser that I could invite everyone I knew and get everyone together.

First thing we had to do was get a rough idea of who was going to come. Then we started looking for where we could host the quiz, chose the date and I started to invite people to come along. I decided to let everyone coming pick their teams and they could be in teams between 4-6 and we charged £5 per person, we were lucky enough that the pub gave us the space for free and didn’t charge us so that all the proceeds could go to VICTA .

When I had an idea of who was coming I started to create my quiz, we had quite a range of ages, I used the VICTA pub quiz resource as a base and then I tailored the questions to try to make sure there were questions that each group would know because I’ve always found that the best quizzes are the ones where you know the answer in the back of your mind, rather than having no clue or finding it too easy. We decided it would be fun to have joker cards, so a card that each team could hand in on a round that they felt they would do the best in that would then double their points!

I designed joker cards, tablecloths and stickers for everyone’s table. I also wanted to host a raffle, so we had a big clear out and had lots of donations, so we managed to put on a huge raffle that included 3 litres of Jack Daniels! I was having to plan and organise my pub quiz fundraiser alongside my bake sale fundraiser and then the weekend in between I had my first ever half marathon so it was a hectic few weeks but everything went to plan. In the end we had a brilliant turnout, 60 people and 10 teams!

I was really surprised at how nervous I was to host the quiz, I was so focused on the planning I hadn’t thought about the fact that i would have to host it, I was lucky enough that my mum was helping me and she has hosted a few fundraisers in her time and after a few rounds I felt a lot more comfortable and confident and the hardest part was having to be at the front and not on the table taking part with my friends. We started with a picture round then a general knowledge round followed by a music round and then a connections round. We had a little break in the middle this is when we sold the raffle tickets. We used the sum up machine that I had bought for my bake sale fundraiser for the raffle ticket sales and I think this was where we raised the most of our money. The final round was a wipeout round, where if you got one of the answers wrong you would score a zero! Then to bring the fundraiser to a close it was raffle time we had so many prizes at least one person from every team won a prize.

I raised £700 which made it my biggest fundraiser by far! The highlight of the fundraiser for me by far was announcing to everyone that not only was it my biggest fundraiser but that we had smashed my fundraising target out of the park. Everyone cheered and was so happy for me and to be a part of my journey it was so touching and uplifting! Everyone seemed to love the quiz and have an amazing time.

I’d definitely host this kind of event again and recommend it to others. It was amazing vibes and it was so much fun everyone loved it. It was a good amount of planning but so worth it to raise the amount of money that we did!