Last year, keen golfers Andrew Gamble and Lina McKenna, of the Harewood Downs Golf Club in Buckinghamshire, didn’t let the pandemic stop them from raising an incredible £15,000 for Crohn’s & Colitis UK.
The women’s and men’s team captains each pick a charity to support each year, but in 2020 the two club captains decided to pool their fundraising efforts together for a cause that’s especially close to Andrew’s heart.
“My daughter Amber got diagnosed when she was a teenager,” Andrew explains. “What happens normally is the women’s captain might have her own charity and the men’s captain will have his own, but Lina kindly said we’d run with the one this time.”
The pair organised a selection of events for the club to take part in, including a bridge drive, a charity auction and a Christmas raffle. All with the aim of raising money for Crohn’s & Colitis UK.
Andrew says, “It went on all year, from November 2019 to November 2020. Obviously, it was interrupted by a few lockdowns along the way.”
Despite the difficult circumstances, however, Andrew and Lina found ways to raise awareness as well as money and were delighted to discover that their members were just as eager to donate.
“The ladies have a bridge drive, which is a main fundraiser and normally we have about 80 people attending on an afternoon. Obviously, that couldn’t happen during lockdown, so we ran an online one instead,” says Lina. “Where we couldn’t do it, we tried to improvise.”
The most successful of the events put on was the charity auction, where gentlemen pairs of golfers enter themselves as auction items and people bid for them.
Young golfers in the club also stepped up with their own event to help raise funds for Crohn’s & Colitis UK and a local foodbank charity. “The Juniors did their Midsummer’s Day 72 holes of golf and they raised a phenomenal amount, that was just with them playing golf, but there was stamina required,” says Lina. “I think that’s why people were generous, people wanted to support them. When we got back to golf, people were very enthusiastic to raise money for charity.”
