NATIONAL CHOPPER CLUB ISSUE
espite lots of claims by the Government that there’d be help for charities during this crisis, we haven’t been able to gain a single penny in governmental support and, in addition to fundraising events in 2020 having to be cancelled, many other events that traditionally support us with sizeable donations’ve also been cancelled, and when you also consider that the vast majority of people in the UK now find themselves less able to support their chosen charities, you begin to see the dire situation we’re facing as this year progresses.
The profits from You’ve Been Nabbed usually provide much of the cost of employing our two paid employees (Office Manager and Administrative Assistant) but, fortunately, we were able to furlough our admin’ assistant, but this almost total lack of income’s forced the trustees of the charity to suspend the grants system, which provides financial help to people with disabilities to get bikes, trikes and sidecar outfits adapted to suit their needs.
Not being the sort of people to sit back twiddling our thumbs, and hoping for manna from heaven, we decided to run an on-line virtual event via our Facebook page on the weekend that should’ve been the 29th You’ve Been Nabbed rally. It didn’t raise as much money as it might, but it did give us a chance to build up our experience of such events. We had terrific live music performances on the evening of Friday, May 8th from NABD patron and top-class troubadour Stevie Simpson; Steph Hoy played live from
DParis; Billy Mac and Denis Dowling did their sets; and headline was a solo set from Chris Harwood of Exhibit A. On the Saturday we posted a series of videos from previous NABD events throughout the day, including excellent performances by Exhibit A, 5th Element, T-Bone Jones, The Rattlers, Lil’ Devil, ReGenerate, Magnum, and The Jalapenos, with lots of banter online to keep the party going, and we also had a very special guest comedy video supplied by the magnificent Troy Hawk. And on the Sunday we had a live stand-up comedy Happy Hour (which actually lasted two hours), hosted by myself and my lovely wife Mandy (who got very drunk very quickly testing the cocktails I made during the early part of the show), and featuring live comedy sets from very fine stand-up comedians Richard
Massara, Jonathan Mayor and Martin Mor, with a guest set from the up-andcoming Bob Ingham. Despite a few hitches along the way, everything went pretty well with the performances, and we had a gratifying number of people watching online, and joining in the banter. Everybody involved’d donated their time and talent free of charge, and webmaster Simon Freedman did a magnificent job in the background keeping it all from falling apart.
Unfortunately we hit a major snag with attaching ‘donate’ buttons to the live performances on the host page, which meant donations fell far below what we’d hoped, but we managed to sell a couple of hundred limited edition event patches, which brought the total up to a much-needed £1,000 for the weekend. Fortunately the Sunday also coincided with Mandy’s birthday, and she’d set up a Facebook birthday fundraiser for the charity, which raised a staggering £3,044 toward the NABD survival fund!
With many lessons learned we immediately started thinking about following up the event with another virtual rally to coincide with the cancelled dates of our annual Nabdonia rally on the first weekend in July. This time we set up a specific event page, and made sure in advance that we could attach ‘donate’ buttons to each individual performance. One of the great advantages to using the Facebook donation system is that every single penny donated goes to the charity nominated – Facebook take nothing out for administration fees (unlike Just Giving and other so-called charity fundraising sites who take a hefty slice from both donors, and the charity concerned, for using their site). This time we made sure there was plenty of prior publicity, and lots of chatter generated about the event online, so that when it began on Friday, July 3rd we had a very respectable number of people watching.
With naked compering throughout the evening by myself and the lovely Mandy (due to us having had to make soup out of our clothes because of the privations of Covid-19), we enjoyed magnificent live music performances from Stevie Simpson, Jeff Lockett, Billy Mac, blues legend Adrian Byron Burns, and a rather brilliant trio called Finch. The night was an absolute joy, and the banter online was worth bottling!
On Saturday afternoon we had a Smacked Arse Comedy Show hosted by myself and Mandy (now fully dressed), featuring brilliant comedy sets from Freddy Quinne, Rob Mulholland, Lindsey Davies and Steve Harris, and throughout the day we also had a silly online game running, courtesy of NABD trustee Vic Hawkes, who was also overseeing the online auction of a three-day mini-break for six people at a lovely farm in the Staffordshire Peak District.
In the evening we returned to the live music with brilliant performances with Stevie Simpson, Sam Ferris, Steph Hoy, Denis Dowling, and Chris Harwood (who went on to do a spectacular two-hour encore). Once again we had a special limited edition event patch for sale, but this time we had a much larger audience tuning in from at least five countries, and the upshot of the Virtual Nabdonia Rally 2020 was, more than £5,000 raised toward the NABD survival fund.
Needless to say, we’re already planning a Virtual Autumn Nabd’ness for September – keep an eye on www.nabd. org.uk and our Facebook page for further information.