Charity Starts at Candy’s Cupcakes

If you make cakes, good, tasty cakes then you may find that others make a beeline for you to make them for charity events and fundraisers. As much as cake decorators, like most human beings, would love to be able to donate products to every charity letter, email or message received, it isn’t always possible for a number of reasons.

Time restraints, funding, and business planning have meant that I’ve had to come up with a decision making process to ensure I can help charities without ‘going under’ as a business.

Charities

I have made the conscious decision to make an annual donation to Macmillan, because lets face it ,they are the charity close to most peoples hearts and also base a lot of emphasis on cakes and cupcakes as a means of fundraising. I love the fact that once a year they actively encourage people to plan coffee mornings to fundraise. Who can say no to a good old brew and a bun?

This year, since leaving the corporate world to become self-employed, I decided to donate a ‘Brew-and-a-Bun’ cake (pictured) and 24 cupcakes to my husbands place of work, Fujitsu, in Manchester. They managed to raise a whopping £145 with the help of my cakes!

The other main charity I support is called Gift of a Wedding who are based in my local town, Stalybridge. This fantastic charity are able to plan an entire wedding in a short space of time, in some cases 24 hours!

Their aim is to gift an entire wedding to people with terminal illnesses. The charity rely exclusively on donations from people all over the UK like you or I. If you are able to offer a wedding service such as photography, wedding favours, flowers or even donate your old wedding dress, tiara or veil!

I have previously donated a 3 tier wedding cake and often look out for further opportunities to donate via their Facebook page. Well worth taking a look. It’s lovely to be part of such a happy day for those who are otherwise experience intense sadness and suffering.

Charitable Donations

In terms of other donation requests, I’ve found that by creating a ‘gift voucher’ system I’m able offer a fundraising prize to carefully chosen events. These tend to be local events and/or involve customers who have previously bought from Candy’s Cupcakes.

What Should You Do?

My advice to other cake decorators would be to choose a system that works for you. It’s good to fundraise for worthwhile causes. However, choose them carefully and don’t be afraid to say no.

Remember, there are enough cake makers and hobby bakers to support almost every event taking place, so let's spread the work amongst our peers.