A twelve hour day – counting money

I love counting money. In the early days of Breast Cancer Campaign we used to count all the money from street collections in the office and bag it up to take to the bank – there weren’t very many collections or many of us. Now most of the collections are done by others – groups of volunteers, RAGs etc and they count the money and deposit it – except for one day of the year, the day of the mega-raid during October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Part of the deal when I left was that I was invited back for mega-raid day, which was Friday October 21. Raggies from a number of universities across the UK come to London and collect at tube and train stations around the City. Members of staff volunteer to don backpacks and go and empty the buckets (too much like hard work for me) and bring the cash back to the office to be counted, which is the bit I like. Members of staff also give a hand and a contingent from Barclays come in and work in shifts as well and it is hard work but great fun. The Raggies are hugely competitive so the first task is to count the total from each bucket so that by the end of the day (or an early hour of the following morning……) they know who the top money raisers are – the sorting and bagging come later. I finally left just before 10 pm at which point the total was over £31,000.

This morning the front of Number 10 Downing Street was bathed in pink to raise awareness of breast cancer - what a coup. Well done Campaign!