The Knockadoon Youth Week (KYW) is a non-profit organisation, heavily dependent on fundraising to keep costs down for our campers, deliberately running at a loss so that the programme is affordable for everyone, regardless of socio-economic background. It also ensures that the overall quality of the camp is improved each year by purchasing new activity equipment and providing training & development opportunities for our leaders to have them better equipped to deal with the needs of our campers. All of the work the KYW leader group put in throughout the year is at an entirely voluntary basis whether that is promotion, fundraising, administration or actively performing leadership duties at KYW events and as such all money that comes in to the KYW is used for the betterment of the programme for the young people who experience it.

Each year the KYW sets out to fund raise a minimum of €18,000. The money raised gets split up into the following categories;

• Transport Costs – €13,000
  • Aside from camp fees, the second biggest expense in the KYW is the cost of transport, particularly given rising fuel costs. Without raising the funds to cover transport, the overall camper fee would have to be inflated and we would have to charge a much higher price per camper than the current €240.

• Training Costs – €3,000
  •  We take pride in providing training & development opportunities for our leaders so that they have all the tools available to them to serve the needs of the campers in their care. In order to achieve this, we need to pay for external training sessions. Some of these training’s include basic first aid, lifeguard training, child protection and safeguarding training, SafeTALK suicide awareness training & more.

• Sports & Activity Equipment – €2,000
  • Each year the KYW purchases and/or repairs the sports and activity equipment for camp. With our diverse activity schedule, our aim is to provide activities that interests every type of personality we have on camp. Within this category, we could be buying anything from new footballs to paint brushes to DJ equipment!

 

 

Each region in the KYW is given a target at the beginning of each year and it is up to the KYW volunteer leaders in these regions to organise and manage fundraising events to hit these targets. Throughout the year we run a wide variety of fundraisers such as; bake sales, bag packs, sponsored walks and more.

However, these fundraisers can be very time consuming and although they all add up to reach our target, the time spent organising and attending these individual fundraising events do not equal the rewards gained on most instances. With that being said, our new approach is to do more with less as we look to get smarter with our fundraising and free up time for our already overworked volunteers so that they can really invest their time in both themselves and improving the KYW for the campers.

The Knockadoon Youth Week is committed to achieving the standards set out in the Statement of Guiding Principals for Fundraising under the ICTR Fundraising Best Practice. Click here to find more details regarding the KYW’s adoption of the Statement of Guiding Principles for Fundraising.