Cheese on Toast Donates Money to WNO

Cheese on toast, the green stuff.

Fundraising can be tricky at the best of times, at the not so best of times it becomes tricky to the power of 5,098,456. Plus infinity. I could offer a Dodgeballesque car washing service all winter long (depending on the state of my knees and frostbite) but I doubt I would raise little more than £2.89 for WNO after deducting tax and the cost of hiring a bucket and sponge, and kitchen foil. Fortunately for WNO they have people who know how to raise some coin, cash, dosh, moolah in ways that avoid rabies shots or developing a case of housemaid’s knee, wicketkeeper’s knee, superglued to the floor by your knees knee...

So what are these ideas? And are they painless to your wallet and knees?

First up there’s easysearch.org.uk. By following the preceding link and this mention of cheese on toast you will be taken to easysearch.org.uk that gathers the results of Yahoo! Bing and Ask.com searches that will, well, I’ll let them tell you what happens:

“Use easysearch every time you search the Web and we'll give 50% of the fees paid by our advertising sponsors to Welsh National Opera.

Use easysearch instead of Google or any other search engine and you can make a real difference to Welsh National Opera. By making just 10 searches a day with easysearch, you can raise around £20 a year.”

£20 may not sound like much, but depending on the numbers that use it you never know. Anyway, it’s now Hairman’s Preferred Search Engine. To use it all you have to do is either set it up as your homepage or bookmark it.

The second way for you to donate money without actually donating money is by shopping online through easyfundraising.org.uk. Again cheese on toast will take you to a website where, after registering, you will find that your purchases will include a kickback from the sale towards WNO. Again I’ll let the professionals explain:

“We provide a FREE service where you can shop with your favourite online stores and at no extra cost raise funds for any charity, good cause or group you choose to support. You still shop directly with each retailer as you would normally, but simply by using the links from our site first, each purchase you make will generate a cashback donation to the cause you wish to support.

For example, spend £25 with WH Smith and 3.5% will be donated. You will have raised £0.88, at no extra cost to your purchase. Make any purchase from Amazon and 2.5% will be donated. Insure your car with Direct Line and raise £35.00, or purchase a mobile phone from O2 and earn £17.50, and so on.”

There’s a comprehensive list of retailers on the site (including Amazon, HMV, iTunes, LOVEFilm), but I’d like to point your way towards Crotchet Classical (I can't hyperlink to pages without signing in I'm afraid), an independent classical retailer, who offer a whopping 5% donation.

As with easysearch.org.uk this will only work if people act together – so why not mention it to your family, friends or even complete strangers who like cheese on toast. But you have to remember that for your purchases to count towards WNO you need to log in every time and follow the links to the retailers on easyfundraising.org.uk otherwise your purchases will not count towards WNO.

Happy surfing and shopping!