FAQs
Fundraising
There’s loads of ways to support CALM and our life-saving services. From physical challenges like runs, hikes and swims to holding your own streaming event, or supporting CALM in memory of a loved one. Evert penny raised helps us to continue to support anyone who needs us, no matter what.
Check out all the ways you can get involved - we’ve got a bucket load to get you inspired!
At the moment, the bulk of our funding comes from our amazing supporters – you! We receive a small but hopefully growing proportion of our income from trusts, foundations, local authorities and corporates.
CALM currently spends 83% of its expenditure on delivering our services: that’s answering calls and webchats on our helpline; working with communities across the country; and campaigning for better awareness and understanding of suicide and its devastating impact. Everything else is spent on keeping the charity running and fundraising to ensure we can help the hundreds of thousands of people who need our support every year.
It can take us a few days to process your donations once we have received them, but as soon as we do receive your donation we will send you a thank you letter by way of receipt.
A letter of authorisation outlines that you or your event is an official CALM fundraising event. Tell us about your event and then request your letter of authorisation!
We have a whole host of resources to signpost people to our life-saving web chat and helpline services, as well as our campaigns. You’ll need to register your event in order to request materials.
Then we'll email you a link to our Kit store where you'll find badges, buckets, beermats and posters, as well as digital assets - we’ve got it all.
Unfortunately not. We’d suggest speaking to your local community first - there’s a whole host of people who may be able to donate materials, refreshments, venues or publicity. We can also supply you with a letter of authority to confirm you are fundraising for CALM.
The easiest way to fundraise these days is through an online platform like Just Giving.
If you’d still like a sponsorship form, first you’ll need to register your event.
Then we'll email you a link to our Kit store where you can download a sponsorship form and other documents.
You can pay in your fundraising online.
Or by post - send a cheque, postal order or charity voucher made out to Campaign Against Living Miserably to our address:
CALM, 5 Wootton Street, London, SE1 8TG
Let us know when you have paid in your fundraising so we can keep an eye out for it.
Don’t forget to ask your sponsors to declare Gift Aid where appropriate - it’ll increase the amount CALM receives from your activity at no cost to you. CALM can claim back the basic tax rate paid on your sponsored donation - currently 25p for every £1 given.
You can use our in support of logo on your team kit as long as you follow the logo usage guidelines.
Download our logo and logo usage guide
Please make sure that you get sign off from CALM before printing.
If you are holding an event in support of CALM then you can use our in support of logo as long as you follow the logo usage guidelines.
Of course. We get it, things happen. Just let us know so that we can update things our side.
We’d love to… but as a small team based in London our capacity is limited. We may be able to send volunteers or a speaker on a case by case basis.
We’ll try. #TeamCALM is huge. Amazing supporters like you are fundraising and supporting CALM almost every hour of every day, which means there’s lots of stories to tell.
We’ll share your content and posts on our social media feeds when we can - but we have to also make sure the important stuff we do like our helpline and webchat don’t get lost.
Running vests are not sent out automatically, you need to order one. If you have registered your event, or signed up to one of our runs, there will be a link from your welcome email that will take you to our Kit store where we have all of our merch.
If you haven’t registered your event:
Then follow the link in your welcome email to Kit where you can get your vest.
Race packs are sent out by the event company who organise the event. They should usually arrive between 4 weeks and a few days up until the event. They include your bib number and tracking chip.
If you have not received your race pack, contact the event organiser directly. If you do not know who the event organisers are, let us know and we can help.
A donation from yourself would mean a great deal to CALM and the people we support. The vast majority of the money we raise from generous donors like yourself are unrestricted, meaning we can spend it on all areas of our work. It could go to our Helpline and Webchat service, which answered over 157,000 calls from people in need in 2021.
To give you an idea of what this looks like, for every £1 received by CALM, 83p is spent on charitable activities (helpline/webchat, campaigns and other services). The remaining 17p goes on fundraising and governance. You can also find out more about how we and other charities spend their money by looking on the Charities commission website.