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Forever Funds
Your Forever Fund | Your memories | The benefits of a Forever Fund | Grow your Forever Fund | Our thanks to you | How to start your Forever Fund | Bereavement support
Find out more about our Forever Funds below or set up your own fund now.
Your Forever Fund
A Meningitis UK Forever Fund is an online tribute fund in memory of someone special whom you have lost to meningitis. Through this fund you can have a permanent place to remember your loved one, as well as raise money in their name for Meningitis UK. A Forever Fund is easy to set up and manage, and once you are online can be viewed by friends and family around the country and even around the world.
Your memories
With your Forever Fund you can create an online page that is personal to your loved one. This is very easy to set up and is a special place for you to remember them. You can add photos and memories and there is also a journal where you can write down your thoughts about your loved one - who they were, what inspired them, their achievements. Friends and family can also leave messages in the Visitors' Book and can light a virtual candle. They can also make donations and set up their own fundraising pages linked to your fund for any event or occasion, eg getting married or running a marathon, where the money raised will be attributed to your Forever Fund's total.
The benefits of a Forever Fund
A Forever Fund is a permanent tribute to your lost loved one. There is no expiry date and so your fund can be as timeless as the forget-me-not flower which symbolises it. With a Forever Fund all your fundraising events can be featured online as 'sub-pages', which all feed into your fund's growing total.
When a loved one dies, we can often feel helpless, and uncertain about how to ensure that they are fittingly remembered. Setting up a Forever Fund can assist in the grieving process. Many families tell us that knowing that they are fundraising towards the elimination of meningitis is a great help to them.
Grow your Forever Fund
Your fundraising efforts for Meningitis UK, in your loved one's name, can all be linked in to your special Forever Fund page. A running total can be viewed onscreen, so that at any time you can check to see how far you have come in helping Meningitis UK fight this awful disease. Once you set up your Forever Fund, we'll send you an information pack with fundraising ideas to help you grow your fund, together with tips on how to spread the word to your friends and family. Or, if you're keen to get ideas straight away, visit our fundraising pages for plenty of inspiration to get you started.
One of the main benefits of the Forever Funds is that sponsors of your fundraising events can pay online. However, if you raise money offline via events we are more than happy to deal with the adminstration for you and add this total to your Forever Fund, so that your running total is a true reflection of what you have raised.
We can also arrange for any standing orders which you or your family set up, to be paid towards your Forever Fund.
Our thanks to you
As our thanks to you for setting up a Forever Fund and supporting our Search 4 a Vaccine to eradicate meningitis, we will add your loved one's name to a forget-me-not flower in our online forget-me-not field as soon as your fund is established.
When your Forever Fund reaches £500 we will send you a beautiful cedarwood keepsake box, carved with forget-me-nots andspecially engraved with your loved one's name.
When your Forever Fund reaches £3,000 we will place your loved one's name on a plaque by a tree in our memorial woodland plot. Each year Meningitis UK holds a special memorial service at this woodland for our supporters, to remember those who have been lost to meningitis.
How to start your Forever Fund
If you are ready to start your Forever Fund now, go to our Meningitis UK dedicated Forever Fund website. Click on the button which says ‘Start a Forever Fund' and follow the simple instructions. You will need a valid email address and to think of a password to complete the process.
Choose the title of your Forever Fund carefully, as this cannot be changed. We recommend simply using the firstname-surname format, eg The Spencer Dayman Forever Fund. This will make it easier to find for your friends, family and anyone who wants to contribute to it.
A leaflet giving fuller instructions on how to set up your Forever Fund is available, simply telephone our office on 0117 947 6320 and the team will be happy to send one to you.
Once you have set up your fund we will be notified automatically, and we will then put your loved one's name in our online forget-me-not field.
Bereavement support
Our Founder Steve Dayman knows all too well the pain of losing a loved one. His son Spencer died from meningitis when he was just 14 months old. Steve regularly visits families throughout the UK, many of whom tell us how beneficial they find it to talk to someone who understands what they are going through. If you would like Steve to visit you, please telephone the Meningitis UK office on 0117 947 6320 or email information@meningitisUK.org and we will arrange a meeting for you. Or visit our special bereavement page, for ways in which we can help you.
For further information or help with any aspect of our Forever Funds, please contact the office on 0117 947 6320.
Where your money goes
In addition to helping you, a Forever Fund also helps Meningitis UK in our quest to stamp out meningitis. This is just an example of where your money can go:
- £10 = 1,000 ‘Know the symptoms’ wallet-size cards
- £25 = 1 hour of in-depth research
- £100 = 1,500 ‘What you need to know about meningitis’ leaflets
- £500 = Lab computer
- £3,000 = Biological microscope
- £40,000 = Research assistant for a year
"As a paediatrician, I have looked after many children with meningitis and meningococcal septicaemia and witnessed first hand, time and again, the suffering of these children and their families. Support from Meningitis UK is vital in our efforts today to stamp out this disease with a vaccine. Scientists in my team in Oxford are working hard with this support to study whether a potential vaccine we have identified could bring us a step closer to eliminating this disease."
Andrew J Pollard FRCPCH PhD, Professor of Paediatric Infection & Immunity Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, University of Oxford
Remember your loved ones
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