Planning your activities and events

This is a document which is aimed to help you with your planning of your activity. It asks questions around the planning of your event, cost of your event and what steps will be in place to ensure your event runs smoothly and safely. Activity Plans also enable us to pay invoices for your events.

Important: Please use the Activity Plan Template

As a fundraising group you can decide within your group who is best place to take the lead on ensuring the Activity Plan is completed and sent to your community fundraiser.  It can be done by one person, or several people filling in different sections.

If you are unsure on how to fill the activity plan in, please contact your community fundraiser.

We ask that the Activity Plan is completed six weeks before your event. This will allow us plenty of time to check if additional information or support is needed, ensure payments can be made and to send out additional materials. 

You can send the activity plan in earlier than six weeks, and contact us if you need to update information as the event planning is being finalised.

However, there may be occasions where you have been given short notice e.g. to have a stall at a local fair. Where this occurs please contact your community fundraiser straight away and complete the activity plan. Where possible we will try to ensure that you can attend these events, but please keep in mind there may be occasions where we are unable to approve an event with less than six weeks’ notice.

To help with your event we have put together two useful guides.  In short you need to cover

• Venue/location details
• What the event is
• Any costs and expected income
• What steps will be in place to keep the event safe and make it a success.

Activity Plan Guidance   – This gives an outline of what you should include in your Activity Plan including an A-Z list of possible hazards to consider. It also covers what you should do if something goes wrong on the day.

Activity Plan Guidance: Keeping it Legal   – This gives you a short outline of things you need to consider to make sure your activities are legal such as our charity number, running competitions, and public entertainment.

If you cannot find your answer in these guides please contact your community fundraiser with your question.

Depending on the event we might need additional information from third party providers, the venue or the council. Your community fundraiser will be able to give you more information.

The main form which you need to complete is the Activity Plan, however, we do have additional documents which you could use depending on your event.

Fundraising Group Details Planning Template for Large Events     – this may be useful if you are planning a large event which requires a lot more detail during the planning stages.  This is an optional document.

Service Provider Booking Form    – if you are having support from a third-party company e.g. photographer or DJ, you should always get a written agreement in place. Even if they are offering their services for free.  If they are unable to provide you with a written agreement, then please use this template.

Venue Booking Form    – if you are hiring a venue you should always get a written agreement in place. Even if the venue is offering their space to you for free. If they are unable to provide you with a written agreement, then please use this template.

YES – if the event is free or you are selling tickets you can sell them online. We have set up a partnership with Trybooking which an online service for is setting up and managing ticketed events.  You may have used similar services such as Eventbrite. 

It can help with selling tickets, table plans and collecting information such as dietary requirements.

Contact your community fundraiser to arrange for your event to be set up.

There are two ways which this could be done. We can either pay an invoice or Reimbursing fundraising group members who paid for items for the event in advance.

• Invoices
  • Ensure you have completed an activity plan
  • Agreed with your fellow fundraising group members and community fundraiser the costs of the event and are all in agreement.
  • Update the Activity Plan with these details
  • Request that invoices are addressed to “Marie Curie”
  • Send invoices onto your community fundraiser as early as possible to allow time for our finance team to arrange for payments. 

Reimbursing fundraising group members:

• Ensure you have completed an activity plan
• Agreed with your fellow fundraising group members and community fundraiser the costs of the event and are all in agreement.
• Update the Activity Plan with these details
• You can claim back any out-of-pocket expenses – as agreed with your Community Fundraiser – using the Volunteer Expenses Claim Form   .
• You'll  find more information on managing your expenditure in chapter six of the Fundraising Groups Handbook  .

There are six pre-written activity plans which cover some basic fundraising group activities. However, we need you to complete an activity plan for activities which we have not covered, or if your activity is including more than covered in the pre-written plans.

Having food at your event is a great way to make your event memorable and increase fundraising. Whether it's a cake sale or providing a jacket potato after taking part in a Firewalk, it is important that we ensure all food is prepared safely and that we always tell your attendees what ingredients are in the food in case of allergies.

If you are making the food yourselves, you need to read these food hygiene guides before you get started, as they will give you some useful advice on how to ensure you are preparing your food safely: Food Safety transcript and Food Safety workbook. 

If you are looking at getting an external caterer to provide food for your event, then please read the section on food in the Activity Plan Guidance.

The document contains some quizzes and multiple-choice tests, we recommend that you complete these to test your own knowledge but once completed these don’t need to be sent anywhere.

A JustGiving campaign pages allow people to make online donations directly to your group, and they can set up fundraising pages for their own events or challenges through your page, meaning the funds they raise will be automatically linked to your fundraising totals.

Please take a look at our JustGiving guide for more information.