Mountain top fundraising advice

A few months ago a friend and I got together to think up a fundraising challenge, just like loads of Send a Cow supporters do.

We wanted our challenge to be fun, memorable and tough. Being keen mountainbikers, it had to include mountains, so we decided on Snowdon (sleeping on top), Cader Idris and then Pen Y Fan*! After a lot of planning and training, we successfully completed our challenge last weekend - which was the hottest of the year! It was a pretty difficult, with tough, steep climbs, some really rocky descents and amazing panoramic views. 

After it all, I thought it would be a good idea to pass on what we learnt from the fundraising to help anyone out there who is thinking about organising their own challenge event for Send a Cow.

Here's my advice:

- give it/your team a name, we chose, 'The Big Welsh 3 Challenge!'

- set an achievable, but ambitious target (we are just about to get ours when we add up on and offline money)

- set up a JustGiving page, it was really easy and a great way to get money in by simply sharing the link by email - no chasing up sponsorship money either! Here is our page

- if you're on Facebook, post a link to your JustGiving page every now and then and let people know how your preparation is going - you could also set up a page to tell people what you're doing, we made one too

- spread the fundraising out, don't leave it all down to one person

- see if anyone works for a company that will match what you raise (one of our team members did this)

I can really recommend carrying out your own event, and I think it would be great to hear about all sorts of supporters doing fun challenges. If you do decide to make up your own, please tell us about it on our Send a Cow Facebook page, we'd love to hear from you.

*We were all legal as we pushed up the top of Pen Y Fan (the last bit is a footpath), and we did wear helmets!