Macmillan Biggest Coffee Morning 2007

I was encouraged to host a Coffee Morning last September for Macmillan.

My experience of Macmillan nurses was based on my own need to ask for help when my father had throat cancer back in 2003.

I live in Kent and he was in the Midlands so it was impossible for me to provide him with constant care. The Macmillan nurse assigned to him was wonderful, she was very efficient and knew just when to step in, what level of assistance we needed and eventually was able to put the wheels in motion at very short notice to find a suitable hospice place for my dad.

Hosting a coffee morning was an entirely new venture for me and I decided I needed a bit more than just coffee, cake and chats to old friends. It would be a chance to meet up again with old friends and colleagues and I thought I should ask for their advice how we could to make some money.

Along with my invitation to many of the talented people I know, I asked for them to bring along ideas (and friends) and to use their skills to provide bits and pieces (including cakes) that others might like to buy. I also thought maybe a raffle could bring a bit of extra cash, especially if we got some decent contributions for prizes. A box of chocolates here or some nice perfume maybe were what I had in mind.

At my next appointment at the hairdresser I thought I’d be cheeky and ask if they had any promotional products that I might be able to use for a prize and was staggered when they produced a £50 hairdressing voucher. That ‘upped my game’ somewhat as I realised it was a rather larger prize than my chocolates…so it was at that point that the raffle took on a life of it’s own!

I spent several days visiting local businesses, writing letters and emailing companies asking for contributions and on the whole I got positive, polite responses – not always with a prize, but generally with good wishes for a successful event. As a result of my now – quite major raffle – other family members and friends agreed to sell tickets for me and so it went on.

Coffee morning dawned – not bright and sunny as I had hoped but pouring with rain and absolutely horrid. Friends, who were around on Friday morning had promised to come and those who were invited and unable to come sent apologies, but still provided cakes and bought tickets.

We had decided to do a paperback book swap, for a contribution. A talented friend bought along some of her cross stitch work to sell, along with homemade cards and of course a wonderful array of homemade cakes many people turned up despite the awful rain and spent their money.

The fairy cakes and other smaller goodies were eaten with the coffee and lots of fun and laughter was heard as old friends met up again, in some cases after several years. Outside still it rained. Stair rods seemed to be coming down!

Myself and several of my guests used to work at the local primary school which is nearby and I had invited staff members to come along during their break or lunch times. A couple of them arrived for a quick coffee during the morning, but they bought apologies from others who had hoped to come but now wouldn’t be able to get away as local politician had called in to the school on an unannounced visit.

At that point a couple of my coffee morning guests decided that maybe she would like to join us, after her school visit, so undaunted they set off – in the pouring rain - to wait outside the school to hi-jack the visitor.

A while later we were amused and amazed to see Ann Widdecombe struggling through the puddles to my door to join in the Macmillan Coffee Morning. Apparently, when they asked her to come along she had commented that she had not been invited to any of the events and was more than happy to come and join us. She enjoyed a quick cup of coffee and a piece of my friend’s tasty coffee cake and kindly bought some raffle tickets before thanking us for our initiative to get her there and going back out into the rain for the rest of her school visits that day.

The raffle? Well that was a resounding success, which is not surprising with the array of prizes I managed to secure and a final grand total of well over £500 made the morning very worthwhile.

If you are thinking of hosting a coffee morning here are a few tips I picked up:

• Still invite people even if you know they can’t come – they will still contribute!
• A good way to recycle old paperbacks etc…a bit of a pain to get rid of the left overs though!
• On the whole don’t price things – ask for reasonable contributions. Raffle tickets £1 for a strip of five but six strips for £5 worked well.
• I was able to download the Macmillan logo to add to my list of raffle prizes, so everyone knew it was official.
• I made sure that I sent personal thank you letters to all the companies who donated prizes, so that hopefully they will be willing to do the same again in future. I also added the total that I raised so they knew their contribution had been acknowledged.