wheelie bin world records - breached nda's - success

raising a million pounds, part two.

with dan becoming our inaugural project £1 million fundraiser we were buoyed by his enthusiasm and commitment, and thought maybe we’re not mad to dream this big, or maybe we were mad, but our enthusiasm just might bring other dreamers along on the journey.

as we told the story, so the dreamers came onboard.

i retold the story, exactly how i told it in the coffee shop, almost verbatim, and almost becoming superstitious not to break the pattern, if years of professional sport taught me anything, it was to be very superstitious when on a winning streak, ridiculous i know, but it kept working.

i called another friend to tell him about what had happened in the coffee shop, and he said “i’m in” and it didn’t stop, call after call.

by the end of the day we had fifty thousand pounds committed to project £1 million.

fifty fricking thousand pounds, five of our 100 ten thousands, we had started brilliantly.

i spoke to my mate lewis 

"put me down for twenty five”

“what, twenty five grand?”

“yep”

this was mad.

but he was true to his word, delivering just over twenty five thousand pounds, and creating an amazing 250k multi stage running race in the process, which we are duplicating this year, the legacy of the project lives on.

lew in turn introduced me to his own mate dan on a zoom call, and within minutes i heard the beautiful words “i’m in”.

“but i haven’t finished my story?”

“i’m in”.

wow, i was loving this.

our passion was shining through, and people wanted to help 

craig and aimee, friends of ours, who are extremely successful youtubers, with over 300,000 subscribers to their “kinging-it” channel decided to attempt to set a world record travelling from north to south wales in a wheelie bin, i kid you not.

these two bravehearts are as mad as a box of frogs, and if anyone could do this they could, and after committing to raise £10,000, they obliterated their target, raising almost £65,000, culminating in them being nominated as justgiving charity fundraisers of the year, which they kindly invited us along to the award ceremony in london.

65 large!

bonkers.

as well as all our friends, we had lots of businesses and schools commit to the magic ten grand model, and by the end of 2022 we had been on the most crazy adrenaline fuelled twelve month adventure, and raised over £400,000, a fourteen thousand percent increase on the year before.

but it wasn’t the million.

but here’s the thing, in june of 2022 a foundation, based in america, who had become aware of our work, had contacted us, saying that they loved what we were doing saving lives, and wanted to support us.

we were blown away, and had to be interviewed multiple times by their representatives who had flown over from the states, and chloe and i tried not to show nerves as we chatted to the foundations team.

tthen followed a request for us to sign an nda (non disclosure agreement) which we duly signed along with our trustees.

this was big, and we had to keep it a secret.

unfortunately, fuelled with adrenaline and exuberance, one of our trustees inadvertently breached the nda, and we were forced to make a decision on whether to disclose this to the head of the foundation, with the possible consequences being that the deal was off, but chloe and i concluded honesty was the only policy.

this was not a call i was looking forward to making. 

i had scheduled the call, and at the appropriate time parked my car, breathed deeply, and pressed the number.

“hi jeff”

“hi peter”

“we have a problem”

and as i finished explaining the breach, there was a silence.

a long silence.

“in thirty years of writing nda’s nobody has ever told me they have breached one.

they probably have, but nobody has ever told me they have”.

we discussed the situation in more detail, and it became apparent that peter was disappointed with our trustee’s action, but pleased with our honesty, and as i got off the call, i felt that the call had galvanised the relationship between peter and us even more, and so it came to pass that 486 days after starting project £1 million, the foundation gave us £598,000.

yes you read that correctly £598,000, amazing huh?

and within weeks the first quarter of a million pounds entered our charity bank account, and we were so so proud, the dream had come true, we had raised over £1.1 million and bigmoose was in fact going to help thousands of people, and since january '22 we have testimonials from 25 people we’ve helped telling us they were on the path to suicide, so if you’re reading this there is a very strong likelihood that you are one of over eleven thousand people who donated, and if you are, from the bottom of my heart, and on behalf of every person still alive and living happier lives, thank you, your generosity is sustaining our ecosystem and helping our society.

our work will never be finished, but as long as people need us we will strive to provide them with help and give them hope, and from january last year, where we were seeing 20-25 referrals per month, last month we had 79 people referred, a huge increase, so we will keep working hard, and if you want to join us on any of our fundraising activities we’d love to see you, or if you have any ideas drop me a line, or if you’d like to sign up to a monthly donation, we have a link below.

thanks for reading.

thanks for believing.

thanks for supporting.

blue skies,

jeff