Katie’s disco charity night

My name is Katie Martin, I am a mum of two boys and live in Aberdeen, Scotland with my husband and boys. VICTA stood out for me as my grandfather lost his sight later in life due to a deteriorating eyesight condition, which was so hard to watch him go through.

Having been blessed with two beautiful boys of my own, I can’t imagine how tough parenting can be for families with children who suffer sight loss after seeing how it affected my grandfather. I was passionate about helping support families who require additional support while achieving a goal for myself.

Can you describe the fundraising initiative?

I am very lucky to have a great support network around me, sometimes my motto is, it’s not what you know it’s who you know, in this case it totally helped me!

I was able to book the date for a fundraiser night at a local golf club in Aberdeen, the Caledonian golf club as my sister-in-law was the ladies captain for a few years and also is still a very active member and one of my good friends partner is a DJ. He was luckily free that date and more than happy to help so I decided to put on a Friday night disco on the 6th March.

I sold tickets for £5 each and also asked local businesses and contacts for raffle prizes, and played Hit or No Hit (similar to heads and tales) for £5 per person to guess if the song was a number 1 or not to win a hotel voucher. Raffles were sold at £5 a strip. There was good music all night, lots of dancing and people were so generous!!

I showed a VICTA video to give all my guests a real insight into what the charity does, and I did a short speech about why I chose VICTA and to thank everyone around me. All night I received compliments about how amazing the video was to see and what a brilliant night they had, I ended the night on cloud 9!

How much did you raise?

On the night in cash I raised £1,943, this was made up of Ticket sales, Hit or No hit game and Raffle sales. On the night some people did add donations to my fundraising page, so the night helped me raise over £2K!

What surprised you?

The generosity of people! I knew my family and friends would sponsor and support me but when I started to shout about my disco night and put social media posts up, I was so surprised how quickly tickets sold and how generous everyone was on the night. I was so grateful and so pleased to have raised so much. Everyone loves a good Friday night out and getting behind a good cause.

Would you do organise this again?

I wouldn’t hesitate to organise a future fundraiser night like this one if I was fundraising in the future.

What’s your advice for other team members?

Don’t be shy to ask!! It is quite daunting to reach out to suppliers for donations and prizes but many will want to help and if you don’t ask, you don’t get!

Would you recommend it to others?

Absolutely! We all had a great night and to top it off it got me way above my fundraising target, it was totally worthwhile and now I can focus on finishing my training and getting the 26.2 miles done, knowing I have made a real difference to the families VICTA support.