How Norwich woman put the “fun” in fundraising
Source: Norwich evening news Author: Rowan Mantell She’s enlisted elephants and garden gnomes to her cause, met royalty, staged an impromptu strip show and helped make millions for charity. Theresa Cossey, who has just stepped down as a trustee of the Big C charity, talks about putting the fun into fundraising. She spoke to ROWAN MANTELL. All her life Theresa Cossey has fizzed with money-making ideas. Elephants and garden gnomes were early stars of her fund-raising fervour, and over the past 30 years she has helped raise millions for Norfolk charity Big C – with everything from huge society events to tiny table-top tombolas. She has encouraged people who have run marathons, rafted across the Channel, embarked on sponsored tandem rides in pantomime costume, raced hospital trollies and auctioned anything from bedspreads to baby donkeys. Theresa is, quite simply, a phenomenal fundraiser. Since 1980 she has raised big, big money for Big C, and despite the decades of hard graft, she still believes fund-raising is all about having fun. “Fundraising should be without the final ‘d’; it should be fun, and if it stops being fun you should stop doing it,” she said. That fun has funded hospital wards and equipment, paid for practical and emotional support for cancer patients and their families, and set up teams of scientists researching treatments and cures. This summer Theresa is handing over some of her Big C responsibilities, but not because she has lost her passion for the charity. “When you get past 70 [...]