Tag: Banana Crumble

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Happy Christmas from Banana Crumble

Banana Crumble would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas from us all. Christmas is a time to celebrate but also a time to reflect.

Looking back on everything we have done this year we are so proud of all that we have achieved. We raised £4808.35 at the Banana Crumb-Ball for the Southend Cystic Fibrosis Association and a further £890 for The Cystic Fibrosis Trust from other fundraising events. This means that we have given almost £5700 this year alone to help with the fight to find a cure for CF and to help sufferers improve their daily lives.

We are looking forward to 2020 and hope that we will be able to raise yet more money. It isn’t just about the money but from our perspective being able to make a difference may be a cliche but it is something we strongly believe in. We have published at least three positive and/ or good news articles every week so in these days where bad news gets far more publicity than good news we hope we are spreading something positive.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Sign up today for your regular dose of good news. Sign up takes 2 minutes.  By signing up, reading, sharing and liking our articles, you are helping us raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust! Thank you!  

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Banana Crumble – Happy 2nd Birthday!

It is two years since we launched Banana Crumble and in that time we have raised over £6000 for The Cystic Fibrosis Trust. We have written over 430 pieces of Good News, interviewed over 130 people in our Banana Chat features and publicised numerous good causes, inspirational people and other charities.

We have had to change the way we run Banana Crumble as we were unable to generate enough income through the advertising to carry on with the prize draws. We are still hopeful that one day someone or a company will pick up on what we are doing and what we have achieved and help us to carry on our ideas and enable us to revert to our original idea of being able to offer weekly cash prizes.

In the meantime we are publishing our Banana Chats, featuring Good News articles and hosting events to raise money for Charity. This year we have held an afternoon tea, held a fundraising day at Asda in Shoeburyness, hosting our first ever Banana Crumb-Ball on the 5th October and hoping to run some more fundraising events.

Banana Crumble has helped us to look at the positive things that are going on in the world and enable us to do something positive with our time and we hope that through our fundraising and articles we are helping you to do this too. Even if we bring just a bit of happiness along the way and make you smile whilst raising money for charity then we have all done something worthwhile.

Sign up today for your regular dose of good news. Sign up takes 2 minutes.  By signing up, reading, sharing and liking our articles, you are helping us raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust! Thank you!  

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One hundred weeks of Good News!

This week we have reached a real landmark, it has been 100 weeks since we launched Banana Crumble. Have we achieved everything we set out to achieve? We would like to say yes but this is not the case as we have had to stop our cash prize draws but we have managed to publish over 400 Good News features since that time. Many of these feature articles are about people raising money, doing inspirational things, overcoming challenges or things that just make us smile. In a time when people are saying that life is still doom and gloom it is good to know that we have managed to bring some good news into the world.

We have raised over £7000 in the fight to help Cystic Fibrosis which is an amount that we are all really proud of. We have hosted curry nights, afternoon teas, collected money, run tombolas and coming up shortly is our biggest fund raising event so far. On the 5th October we are hosting The Banana Crumb-Ball at the Grand Marquee, Halfway House, Brentwood, Essex and at this event we have decided to raise funds for our local Southend Cystic Fibrosis Association. Tickets are £50 and includes two welcome drinks, a three course sit down meal, live music from the Hugh Rainey Dixieland Jazz Band followed by a DJ. If you live in the area why not come along for what will hopefully be a great evening and help us to raise some more funds. There are still some tickets left. If you require further details please contact amandaaustin@bananacrumble.co.uk.

We are still hopeful that maybe in the future we will be able to find a sponsor and then be able to reintroduce our cash giveaway, but in the meantime we are going to continue with our good news and raising money and hopefully to bring a smile to everyone and to inspire people to do the best they can both for themselves and for others. If after 100 weeks we have managed this then surely that is a positive thing to have done. We would like to thank everyone for their help with the events and look forward to the next 100 weeks.

Sign up today for your regular dose of good news. Sign up takes 2 minutes.  By signing up, reading, sharing and liking our articles, you are helping us raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust! Thank you!  

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Good News – we are listening……

We are looking for your input. Please read the below and contact us with your ideas by clicking this link

It is now 18 months since we first launched Banana Crumble and in that time we have seen our membership grow. We have given away thousands of pounds in prizes, made people smile, raised over £6000 for charity, promoted numerous events and good causes and certainly spread lots of good news.

When we launched we used Google AdSense and this was the way that we were hoping to generate enough income to cover our weekly prizes. We are a non profit making company so the aim was just to generate enough on a weekly basis so we could continue to give away the weekly cash prizes. If more income was generated then we had the potential to increase our prizes.  In the time since we launched the advertising rates have fallen drastically and we have not been able to generate enough money to cover the prizes.

We have decided after a period of consultation both with members, non members and between ourselves that we need to take some major decisions. We can’t continue to lose money on a weekly basis, the adverts on our site generated by Google Adsense are annoying (many people just turn them off!) and these advertisements are not normally for things that fit in with our values.

What options do we have ?

1. Ask people for an annual £10 membership subscription and hopefully this way we can generate more than enough for the prizes and help us to continue raising additional funds for charity. We would hope that our current members would continue to support us and also encourage new members.

2. To enable us to move away from Google Adsense reach out to our members and ask them for companies that they would like to see featured on our site with their own advertisements. This would give new and start up businesses the chance to advertise with us and enable potential customers to see advertisements that they do want. If businesses want to make a reasonable offer for an advertising space on the website we will certainly consider it either on a weekly, monthly or annual basis.

3. Stop the weekly free cash giveaway and continue with the good news part of the site and just do our own fundraising events. We are looking at hosting a “Banana Ball” on October 5th 2019, as well as many other events over the coming months so this way we are still able to do the fundraising for charity which was one of our major aims when we started.

4. Do you have any other ideas of things we could do to generate income to enable the site to continue with its cash giveaway side of its venture.

5. Find a company or person who would like to sponsor the whole site – if anyone has any ideas then we would love to hear from you.

We hope that over the time we have been in existence you have enjoyed our site and that we will together find a way of moving on and being able to continue with what we wanted to achieve.

Please, we are looking for your feedback. Having read the above why not contact us with your ideas and thoughts by clicking this link

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Why do people think it is too good to be true ?

I launched Banana Crumble using some money that my Grandad had left me, wanting to prove that life wasn’t all doom and gloom and wanted to prove that people can do good things and are not all bad or in trouble. I wanted to raise money for charity and to give people a chance to take that first step on the ladder. Perhaps this was a dream too far?

We have featured musicians desperate for that start, sportsmen trying to raise their profile, people trying to raise funds for so many amazing causes. We have had stories where people have overcome such difficulties and managed to turn their life around. We wanted to give people the chance to win a small amount of cash – we knew it wouldn’t change their life but we were hoping that everything we did would bring a smile to people’s faces.

Everything we have done is to try and inspire and to help people to become the best they can, concentrate on the positives and look forward to new challenges rather than turn them into negatives.

Everyone gives us great feed back and we know that we have helped lots of people. The messages saying that we helped one winner afford to buy Christmas presents for her children, another saying it meant that they could afford food for the week really does make all these things worth while. With the money we have raised from our own fundraising and from the unclaimed prizes we handed over a cheque for £5000 to The Cystic Fibrosis Trust. A total that I am so proud of and one that will certainly be legacy that my Grandad would be proud of.

The money we give away in prizes was supposed to be covered by the advertisements on our site. Every time people read our articles, like, share or click on adverts this is how we were supposed to raise these funds. Unfortunately this hasn’t proven to be the case!! Predicted advertising revenue rates have dropped dramatically. We thought we would be able to offer new businesses or start ups the chance to advertise at a very competitive rate giving them a chance of national exposure and being able to get their businesses up and running. Yet again people think this is too good to be true and don’t want to take that step to sign up with us.

There actually isn’t anything to lose by signing up. There is no catch and everyone who is a Banana Crumble member can vouch for this fact. When we ask people to sign up most are suspicious and won’t believe us. What a sad state of affairs that everyone thinks automatically that we are a scam.

Our numbers have grown and continue to grow each week which is great but for us to continue we need our membership to grow and for people to be active on our site. Can you help us spread the word so that we can continue to raise money for Charity and to be able to spread our own form of happiness? We need a sponsor or people to help us with advertising as well as new members so please can you help us.

Please help us prove that we are not too good to be true.

Have you signed up to Banana Crumble yet?

Sign up today for FREE for your chance to win £25, £50 and £100 each and every week. Sign up takes 2 minutes. All unclaimed prizes get donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. By signing up, reading, sharing and liking our articles, you are helping us raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust! Thank you!

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Anyone for tea?

On Saturday 9th February, Banana Crumble hosted an afternoon tea where they handed over their Cheque for £5000 which was the money raised last year for The Cystic Fibrosis Trust and also to add more funds and to help raise money for their 2019 total. The event was attended by 30 family and friends as well as Jess Nickless from the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

Finger sandwiches and cakes were consumed by everyone a plenty with cups of tea, coffee and glasses of prosecco to wash down all of the food.

On the day we handed over the money Banana Crumble raised in its first year for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust which was totalled at £5000. The money was raised by our own fund-raising events, unclaimed prizes and donations by some of our winners and other organisations, including the Southend Round Table who kindly donated £500. Our Chief Banana and Jess both said some words on the day thanking everyone for attending as well as Asda who helped the event by donating scones and clotted cream for the day. Jess told everyone that the £5000 could cover the CF Trust’s telephone helpline for over a month and what a huge difference this amount of money would make and how grateful they were to Banana Crumble for making such a large donation.

The afternoon ended up raising an additional £310 for the Trust which will go towards our total raised this year..

A huge thank you to everyone who attended the day, to the CF Trust, Asda and all those who helped with cakes and making the afternoon such great fun.

Have you signed up to Banana Crumble yet?

Sign up today for FREE for your chance to win £25, £50 and £100 each and every week. Sign up takes 2 minutes. All unclaimed prizes get donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. By signing up, reading, sharing and liking our articles, you are helping us raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust! Thank you!

 

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Do you live on Smiley Lane or Inspirations Way ?

Here at Banana Crumble we promise to make our featured articles, positive, motivational, inspirational, uplifting or just amusing.

On a fairly regular basis we see lists of road names that are rude or funny. This made us think about what street names we could find that link in with the Banana Crumble ethos. We thought it would be amusing to share with you. So here goes!!

Lucky Lane BS3

Smiley Lane NE66

Happy Island Way DT6

Inspirations Way BR6

Challenge Close DA12

Cheeryble Street M43

Joy Avenue NR15

Then we thought about what we do at Banana Crumble and came up with:

Chats Lane ST21 in honour of our Banana Chat

Chief Street CB6 in honour of our Chief Banana

Winner Street TQ4 in honour of all our winners

Cash Lane  ST21 in honour of our prizes

Charity Crescent WR11 in honour of our Charity of the Year

Prize Close NG11 in honour of our winners and the number of prizes we have given away

Crumblehorn Road PR3 in honour of us at Banana Crumble

Or we could always pop for a drink at The Optimist or at The Good Intent or even to The Winner!!!

Can any of our members come up with names that they think fit into our Banana Crumble ethos or do any of our members live in these roads or frequent these pubs? !! We can’t find any Banana names!!! We look forward to hearing your ideas. Please send any ideas to admin@bananacrumble.co.uk

Have you signed up to Banana Crumble yet?

Sign up today for FREE for your chance to win £25, £50 and £100 each and every week. Sign up takes 2 minutes. All unclaimed prizes get donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. By signing up, reading, sharing and liking our articles, you are helping us raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust! Thank you!

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Merry Christmas from Everyone at Banana Crumble

We wanted to say a huge thank you to all of our members for joining us and helping to raise money for The Cystic Fibrosis Trust. You can help us to raise more funds by getting your friends and family to sign up!! We would like to wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and looking forward to a Banana New Year!

 

Have you signed up to Banana Crumble yet?

Sign up today for FREE for your chance to win £25, £50 and £100 each and every week. Sign up takes 2 minutes. All unclaimed prizes get donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. By signing up, reading, sharing and liking our articles, you are helping us raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust! Thank you!

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I had a dream!!

I had a dream!! I wanted to make the world a better place, I wanted to help people have a chance to take that first step as they start out, I wanted to help raise money for charity and I wanted to give people a chance to be happy!! That was my dream and we are now just over a year on from that initial dream.

Have I achieved this?

Our Banana Chat is aimed at an inspirational person each week and in most cases is someone at the start of their career needing a bit of publicity or a chance to have something published or advertised. How amazing is it that we have featured bands, musicians, sports people, business start ups and and many more. They have all been given the chance to promote whatever they want and to raise awareness for their own project or a charity close to their heart. This has been so rewarding and the feedback from those featured and those reading the article has been nothing more than remarkable. Tick – I feel I have well and truly given people the chance to take that first step into the world and hopefully help some along the way.

Raise money for charity – Absolutely tick, with our own fundraising evenings and the unclaimed prizes from Banana Crumble we have raised over £5000 for The Cystic Fibrosis Trust. A huge sum of money that will hopefully help the Trust with their really valuable work.

Make the world a better place – In a year where there has been lots of bad news we have published almost 300 articles and every one has been a good news or positive story. If the feature didn’t  quite tick that box then it was designed to make you smile. Moving on to our Smile Wall, this has made so many people happy just by looking at it and when we get messages like this 100% we have achieved this goal.

Thank you so much, you would not believe how much we appreciate this as we were so worried about affording Xmas for the kids. This will really help us.

I wanted to make people happy – this is another big tick. Each week when we hear from our winners we ask them for a quote which we have featured in our articles throughout the year. To have helped so many people to do so many things, this is just such an amazing feeling.

I’m a university student so the money will really help with buying food and maybe a night out with my mate. It was really good timing to be fair, as it’s coming up to Christmas and I’m rather short of money at the moment!

Have I achieved my dream? I can 100% say I am really proud of all that we have achieved with Banana Crumble. Have I made any money from this? Absolutely not. I used some money that my Grandad left me to set this up and I know that he would be extremely proud of all that we have achieved.

How do we take Banana Crumble forward. We are looking for companies that have the same positive ethos as us, who want to help us raise money for charity, give people a chance to start out and to inspire others. We are looking for small companies who would like to feature with us and can appear on our website and would perhaps like to advertise with us. We want to find companies who are starting out who can’t afford the massive advertising costs associated with big business. If you feel that you are positive enough to want to join us and would like to talk advertising or sponsorship with us please email us at admin@bananacrumble.co.uk. We are looking for bigger companies who would like to sponsor us and help us continue with our philosophy.

Unclaimed prizes, any profit goes to charity, people have the chance to win a cash prize each week – what is there to lose. It really is win win for everyone and hopefully one that we can take forward into our second year with Banana Crumble. How can you help us ? Read our articles, click on our adverts and get all your friends and family to sign up. Easy!!!!

Have you signed up to Banana Crumble yet?

Sign up today for FREE for your chance to win £25, £50 and £100 each and every week. Sign up takes 2 minutes. All unclaimed prizes get donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. By signing up, reading, sharing and liking our articles, you are helping us raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust! Thank you!

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How amazing is this?

When Banana Crumble launched just over a year ago we decided that our Charity of The Year would be The Cystic Fibrosis Trust. Over that period all of our unclaimed prizes, fundraising and a couple of winners’ donations have totalled up and we have now topped the £5000 mark which is absolutely fantastic news and we hope that this will help The Cystic Fibrosis Trust to continue their great work with our donation.

We are planning on holding an event in the New Year where we can present the CF Trust with our donation. Watch this space… To find out more about the Cystic Fibrosis Trust why don’t you read the “Our Charity” page on our website.

Have you signed up to Banana Crumble yet?

Sign up today for FREE for your chance to win £25, £50 and £100 each and every week. Sign up takes 2 minutes. All unclaimed prizes get donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust. By signing up, reading, sharing and liking our articles, you are helping us raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust! Thank you!