How you can help

The Friends of Ripon Grammar School work hard to help provide those things which students need, but for which school may not have budget. Apart from contributing to the cost of the school minibus every year, our fundraising helps pay for everything from much-needed art materials to sports and computer equipment.

How you can help

We aim to raise funds through social events, which families can support by buying tickets and attending or volunteering your time. Other projects in which parents can get involved include:

  • An annual raffle of prizes generously donated by local businesses, and parents;
  • Events which have included murder mystery plays, Burn’s Night celebration, comedy nights, Christmas fair, art exhibition, astronomy nights, Cash4Coins and a summer ball;
  • Donating and selling refreshments at parents’ evenings, drama productions and other school events, which raise a substantial amount of money each year.
  • The 200 Club, an on-going form of fundraising whereby an annual fee of £15 or £1.25 per month buys you a number in the monthly draw and a chance of winning £50 or £25;
  • By logging on to www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/rgspa when ordering your goods from a wide range of online retailers, a small percentage is donated at no extra cost to you;
  • Match funding – do you work for a large corporation, or do you know of any other parents who do? If so, information on charitable giving is normally available to staff through a company's online internal information system and most large companies and multi-nationals have 'community teams' who offer advice on how to apply for funds. Please see more information on this below.

Match funding – help us raise £100s simply by filling in a form

Many large companies have pots of money that they actually want to give away to charities like ours - they are just waiting for us to ask. One parent who worked for Barclays kindly managed to secure £800 of match funding from the company, simply by filling in a form.

Barclays, Nat West, British Telecom and other large corporations support their staff who want to raise money for charity, often by matching the amount raised at a particular fundraising event.

The parent who helped us raise funds now works for a different employer that doesn’t offer match funding, but we are sure there must be other parents out there working for Barclays or similar companies who may be able to help us raise extra money in this way - for very little effort.

Staff don't usually have to be heavily involved in the fundraising to be considered eligible - just helping out at an event is often sufficient. Recipients usually don’t even have to work for the company full time to be entitled to take part.

If you are eligible, please consider selecting our fundraising group, which has charitable status, as a beneficiary. If not, please mention it to any parents you know who you think could help. Many schemes offer individual staff members funding towards several charitable events a year, so they can still support other charities too.

It would be fantastic if we could find someone who is willing to sign up for some match funding help for any other events throughout the year.

If you think you can help, please contact FRGS on friends@ripongrammar.com.