A cautionary tale

Hi all,

As many of you know we (Pauline and myself) hosted a fun day, on Saturday, at AJ's bar to raise money in aid of the needy of San Fulgencio and La Marina. Whilst this post is not directly related to that fund raising, it is in relation to something strange that occurred during the day, which might have to act as a caution for other fund raisers arranging events in the area.

(Before I proceed, I want to make it clear that I sincerely hope that I am wrong about what I am about to write, and will have great pleasure in retracting this posting, and apologise to the person in question, if someone is able to throw some light on what actually happened.)

During the course of the day, one of the entertainers was approached by a lady who stated that she was from another very well known charity (I do not want to name the charity on this forum, as I do not want genuine fund raising for them to be affected, but we have made them aware of the events of the day). She further stated that they were raising funds by going to various venues and collecting money in return for the donors signing a white t-shirt. The entertainer referred her to Pauline who agreed that she could raise money at this event. This was done rather reluctantly as people were already kindly donating to one charity, but we didn't want to cause offence to what we thought was another genuine fund raising attempt. This was then announced over the PA system. Unfortunately, when Pauline later circulated with our own bucket for loose change etc, she was informed that people had already given to "the other charity" who had been around previously!!

We never thought any more about this until the next day, when certain things didn't add up. Firstly she had no ID that she worked on behalf of another charity (all she produced was a newspaper cutting stating that various people were collecting for the charity); What happened to the T-Shirt that was signed?; Another, well known, fund raiser for this charity had no knowledge of this mode of fund raising, nor did she recognise the description of the lady that we gave her; once she had collected her money she didn't stay for the rest of our fun day nor did she approach any of the organisers to thank them for allowing her to raise money, and advise us of how much she had raised.

As I mentioned at the start, I sincerely hope that we are wrong on our assumptions of this lady's intentions (perhaps it's just a case of 2 + 2 = 5!!) and hope that either she, or someone that knows her can come on and give us confirmation that the collection was bona fide. If she does, I will apologise to her wholeheartedly, but until that time I hope that this posting will serve as a cautionary note to other fund raisers who might be approached with a similar request at their own events. I hope to be eating humble pie very soon.

Peter