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Family Spotlight: Organising a Large-Scale Fundraising Event for Your Child’s Medical Needs
06 Nov 2025
Fundraising for a child with additional medical needs can take many different forms.
For some families, a smaller event such as a bake sale or a local raffle is the ideal way to raise funds. For others, a larger community event — like a sports day or evening gala — can bring people together in a big way. The beauty of fundraising is that there’s no right or wrong way to do it; it’s all about what works best for your family.
For Tess and her family, their annual ‘Cricket for Tess’ fundraiser has raised over £30,000 in just three years! We caught up with Tess’s mum, Cathy, to gather some advice and inspiration for other families considering hosting their own large-scale fundraising event with the support of Tree of Hope.
Introducing Tess
Seven-year-old Tess was born ostensibly healthy, but within just two months her parents noticed worrying changes — she stopped making eye contact, she wasn’t feeding well, and she slept excessively. Soon after, she experienced her first seizure.
Medical tests revealed that Tess had a devastating seizure condition called infantile spasms. In some cases, these seizures can be managed with medication, but as Cathy explains “in Tess’s instance, it's proven to be a one in several million case where she has not responded to medication or indeed any of the other treatment options available in the NHS. And not only that, the treatments she was having through the NHS were actually making her worse, because the more medication you're on, the more side affects you have, and quality of life had really disappeared for her.”
The Financial Challenges of Raising a Disabled Child
Raising a child with a disability often brings additional financial pressures that many families are unprepared for. Cathy highlighted: “What we had come to realise was that having disability in your life completely changes your financial situation. I saw a survey recently which said that disabled people on average require about £1,000 a month extra just to have the same quality of life as non-disabled people and that's certainly our experience.” From ongoing therapy sessions to specialist equipment and holistic treatments, the costs quickly add up.
Why Fundraising Becomes a Lifeline
Understanding these high costs, Cathy and her family decided to turn to fundraising — and found Tree of Hope, the UK’s leading children’s charity helping families fundraise for medical treatment and therapies not available through the NHS.
Cathy explains that “it took a long time to get to this point, but we decided that we would try fundraising and we had heard of Tree of Hope through the disability community. It is very uncomfortable to ask other people for money, but we couldn't believe the response we got from family, friends and quite honestly, sometimes people that have just never even met you."
Tree of Hope has supported and helped our family so much, it’s a very important part of how we manage life with a very disabled child.”
Tess's Mum
How the ‘Cricket for Tess’ Fundraiser Began
The idea for Cricket for Tess came naturally to Cathy and her partner, Leif. “Cricket is something that's meant a lot to both myself and my partner. He is a former cricketer himself and used to play at a very high level in Australia when he was younger,” says Cathy.
Using their cricketing connections, they organised a family-friendly event that brought their community together.
Event highlights included:
- A friendly cricket match with professional and local players
- A BBQ and refreshments
- Face painting and inflatables
- Children’s entertainers
The Best Things About Hosting a Large Fundraising Event
Large-scale fundraisers not only raise vital funds — they also build community spirit and ongoing engagement, encouraging donors to give again and again, without the family having to explicitly ask. As Cathy explains, hosting an annual event helps create a familiar, much-loved tradition that grows each year, and the well-oiled formula makes the organisation of such an event as easy as possible year after year. She likens it to “a bit like a wedding, whereby everybody that knows and loves you will actually make the effort to come if they're around. Tess always seems to really be grateful – she somehow picks up on the atmosphere and my other children, Teddy and Patty have an absolutely brilliant time as well.”
Things to Consider When Planning a Large Fundraiser
If you’re thinking of hosting a big event to raise funds for your child, you need to remember to consider:
- Venue hire and accessibility
- Finding suitable dates for both the venue and guests
- Recruiting volunteers for planning and on-the-day support
- Collecting raffle prizes
- Promoting the event in your local community
Cathy’s Tried and Tested Top Tips for Fundraising Success
- Write a detailed plan: Take a few hours to map everything out and break it into sub-tasks. “You can assign tasks to others and it helps to manage stress.”
- Call in favours: “It's really just getting everybody you can think of aware of what's happening and seeing if anybody can contribute in any way.”
- Ask everyone for support: From local businesses to social media followers, “If you just ask, you never know what will come of it... sometimes someone will surprise you and give you something absolutely knockout amazing.”
- Step out of your comfort zone: “Leave your ego behind and just do things that make you feel uncomfortable... people will understand because if they were in your position, they would do the same. I know that because we all just want our children to have the best lives that we can.”
- Get plenty of volunteers: The more help you have, the smoother and less stressful your day will be.
How Fundraising Has Helped Tess
Thanks to the funds raised through Tree of Hope, Tess has been able to access a wide range of therapies that have improved her quality of life.
"It has really given us the opportunity to explore so many traditional and holistic therapies, which have made a huge difference. And now because we have done the fundraising, Tess is in a much more stable condition. Her seizures have vastly improved, and she is not in pain anymore.”
Tess's Mum
Looking to the Future
As Tess grows older, her family are preparing for new challenges — from larger equipment needs to supporting her independence as a teenager, but for now, the family are deeply grateful for the stability they’ve achieved thanks to fundraising.
“For our whole family, we just have quality of life and we're stable, mentally and emotionally... the support really does mean everything to us.”
You can support Tess and her family here:
https://www.treeofhope.org.uk/get-involved/childrens-campaigns/finding-tess/
