Nurses' Day fundraising - a reflection

Published: 28 May 2010

Nurses Day is celebrated on 12 May each year as a tribute to the amazing work of Florence Nightingale who was born on that day in 1820.

This year at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), we didn’t want to let the occasion go unmarked. It all began when one of our fellow students, Michelle Wyatt approached one of the senior lecturers within the School of Nursing and Caring Sciences, Sabina Sattar with the idea of wanting to do something to celebrate Nurses' Day within the university.

With only three weeks to go there was a lot of organising to do. Was it going to be possible in such a short space of time?  A committee was formed quickly comprising Matthew Starr, Sabina Sattar, Michelle Wyatt, Lesley Smith and Christine Ross. Due to the short time scale and difficulty trying to get us all together we found the use of email the best communicational tool.  Setting up a group email distribution list allowed us to ensure that we all knew what was going on at any specific time.

With the venue booked, we all set to work organising the day’s activities. We decided on various activities for the day including; a bake sale, guess the name of the teddy, a Florence Nightingale quiz, tombola and finally, a book sale. Sabina also sent an email out to a group of students on her module giving students the opportunity to produce poster presentations on the topic area of ‘the history of nursing’.  This meant that we were able to display students’ posters as part of the day. 

Then came the task of obtaining prizes for the various events. Some were donated by fellow students and lecturers at UCLan, Lesley took responsibility of finding prizes for the Florence Nightingale quiz. It turned out to be a remarkably easy task to ask the various outlets on campus to support our fundraising and we ended up with six worthy donations in a very short space of time. We received donations of; a free drinks voucher, a nursing dictionary, a book on the life of Florence Nightingale, a polo t-shirt with the emblazoned university logo, a book token and the crème de la crème was a digital photograph frame donated by our Library IT department.

All we’d had to do was simply explain what Nurses' Day was and who we were raising funds for and the offers of donations just rolled in. In fact, everyone we spoke with seemed genuinely delighted to support our fundraising and we are most grateful for their support. 

The day grew closer and our communication continued, advertising the event to all our peers with the use of leaflets, facebook pages, word of mouth and the use of RCN posters throughout the university campus.

The day itself was a great success. We received a lot of interest and found the day proved popular from students and lecturers throughout the university. In total we raised £182.78 which we have split between two charities; the RCN Benevolent Fund and the Florence Nightingale Foundation with both charities receiving the sum of £91.39 each.

We hope that next year’s Nurses' Day is met with as much enthusiasm and that with careful planning and preparation it can prove to be even more of a success. As the official Nurses' Day Committee for next year we’re hoping to enthuse other students to come and join us. We’re already thinking ‘big’ and have come up with new ideas such as head massage and rolling out the poster competition to the whole school of nursing as well as retaining the really popular cake and tombola stalls. Just think... if we can raise over £180 in a few short weeks, what can we do with a whole year to plan ahead?

Matthew Starr and Lesley Smith, UCLan Student Nurses.

Matthew Starr is a student information officer for the Royal College of Nursing.