Organisation Background
The Friends of Ellington Park is a vibrant community group of local, unpaid volunteers in Ramsgate who have come together and inspired their community to help make their park a better and more enjoyable environment for everyone.
Situation
Last year, the Friends of Ellington Park put in a competitive bid for a £50,000 grant from The People’s Millions which is run by the Big Lottery Fund in partnership with ITV. The prestigious People’s Millions are awarded to the organisation which secures the most telephone votes for their project and competition is always very strong with many notable and worthwhile causes submitting bids.
If they were successful with their bid, the Friends of Ellington Park proposed to develop and build the Ellington Park Wildlife Garden to give the local community access to wildlife conservation, in a specially designed wildlife area complete with a new pond and indigenous plants and wildlife habitats.
The Friends of Ellington Park tried to promote their bid for The People’s Millions but, with their limited resources, they were concerned they would not be able to tell enough local people about it and the fantastic benefits the new wildlife garden would bring to the local community.
Solution
With the deadline for votes looming, the Friends of Ellington Park decided that the only way they could secure a high volume of additional votes would be to design a leaflet and deliver it to thousands of homes in the local area. Unfortunately, whilst the Friends of Ellington Park had a very strong support network, most of their volunteers were older people with limited mobility.
With only a couple of days to go until the voting deadline, the Friends of Ellington Park decided they needed professional help and called upon Dor-2-Dor distribution. Together they developed an eye-catching flyer and organised for copies of it to be delivered to over 5,000 homes and schools in the local community.
Results
After a nail-biting wait, and despite some extremely tough competition, the Friends of Ellington Park were announced the winners of The People’s Millions vote; receiving a phenomenal three times the average number of votes generated by the competition!
Beverly Perkins from the Friends of Ellington Park says: “Without a doubt, our success was down to Dor-2-Dor. They were just brilliant at helping us to get the leaflets out on a very, very tight timescale. They pulled out all the stops to make it happen for us; and it did! The Friends of Ellington Park wouldn’t have won The People’s Millions without Dor-2-Dor. They really did go the extra mile and they couldn’t have done any more.”
