Fundraising

The original idea for fundraising was from Chryed and Ballum fan Katrina, who set up a Stonewall fundraiser in honour of Christian and Syed way back in 2011, and who also wanted to do good in the Ballum fandom too. During the first lockdown, with the first anniversary of Ballum’s first kiss coming up, she and Erin set up a JustGiving page for the British Deaf Association – a Deaf led organisation aiming to develop greater understanding throughout the UK of what deafness means.

To contribute to this page, I organised our first Ballum quiz, held virtually on the anniversary of Ballum’s first kiss, on 6th June 2020. The money to participate (pay what you can) was collected in a Paypal Pool and we ended up with a total of £540 for the British Deaf Association.

The second virtual Ballum quiz, held on the anniversary of the Pride episode (5th July 2020), raised £350, again for the British Deaf Association via the Justgiving page.

In August 2020, Max announced he was doing the Longest Day Golf Challenge for Macmillan Cancer Support, with a fundraising page to go along with it. This prompted me to throw something together in order to make a group donation to the page – and with some Ballum prints lying about, decided to go for something more straightforward; a raffle, £2 per entry (with no limits on number of entries) into another Paypal Pool which would then be donated in a lump sum to the fundraising page. This one really blew me away as lots of people chipped in and we got to £386 in a matter of days. So on the 6th August 2020 I did the draw and made the rounded up donation of £390 to get to the nearest goal – and bless Max, gave us a little shout out via Instagram.

The next venture was another raffle for a small group of Ballum fans over a Christmas Zoom in December 2020, and the charity we eventually decided to go with was SEED, an Eating Disorder charity run by Gemma Oaten, who had the Justgiving page up for donations – and Max gave them a shout out around the time as well. For a relatively small group we managed £172, which I thought was a good amount for a great cause.

The Ballum wedding fundraiser was borne out of a raffle idea, to give out a few extra copies of some soap magazines with Ballum on the cover and give the money to a relevant charity. I set up the page, with the charity suggested by my partner in crime Erin – Just Like Us, a charity for young LGBT+ people aiming to tackle the fact that growing up LGBT+ is still unacceptably tough, which is something relevant to both Ben and Callum as characters. I posted it out during Ballum’s wedding week in May 2021, thinking it could sit there as an opportunity for people to donate as a sort of wedding gift for Ballum – feeling involved in the fictional world whilst making a real-world difference, if you will.
The response, however, was something I really didn’t anticipate. A well chosen charity for an important occasion for these characters generated a really enthusiastic response, aided by Digital Spy (who shared the Chryed Stonewall fundraiser all those years ago), Metro, and even Max himself. We ended up with a massive £4000, smashing the target several times over.

Another opportunity for a raffle came up when Ballum fan Kirsty offered up some prints of Max playing at the charity match in Woking in July 2021, plus a Ben print that was signed by Max at the match. We chose mental health charity Mind, and the raffle made £258, which I rounded up to £260 and donated directly to them in August 2021.

For Christmas 2021 I held another Ballum quiz for the LGBTQ+ Immigration charity Rainbow Migration, and we ended up raising £325, yet another amazing amount for a good cause.

In light of Ben’s rape storyline, and the announcement that EE were working with various charities in order to tell the story, we wanted to try and raise some money for one of these charities to show our appreciation for their input on the story and, again, to utilise the fandom enthusiasm for a worthy cause. We picked Survivors Manchester as they seemed particularly involved and overnight we hit £1000 in donations, resulting in this article from Metro. We went on to raise over £2500 in total.

For Christmas 2022, I organised another quiz, this time in order to raise money for Brain Tumour Research Charity – with Lola’s story we felt it most appropriate. This one raised £320 for the cause.

When Ben’s eating disorder storyline was announced, it made sense to start another Justgiving page for the fandom to once again show their support for the story and solidarity with people like Ben who have dealt with this, and those who support loved ones like Callum has done. I set up a page in June 2023, and with the help of a raffle and another Christmas quiz, we ended up with a total of £2260.