Volunteers wanted to create fundraising team at Scarborough RNLI

The Covid pandemic meant a drop in numbers

Author: Karen LiuPublished 15th Nov 2022

Scarborough RNLI says it needs volunteers to create a fundraising team as the Covid pandemic meant a drop in numbers.

The charity relies on donations from the public to continue saving lives at sea.

It says it costs £400,000 a day to run the RNLI as a whole.

John Porter, Visitor Officer at Scarborough Lifeboat Station, said: "We need people to help in the shop and that's a couple of hours on a weekly basis. We're also looking for people who would like to come and engage with the public in our visitor centre. We get lots of visitors and groups and it's nice to have people in there who can enthuse about the lifeboat service, engage with them and give them information.

"During Covid we unfortunately lost our fundraising team and we're needing to try and raise a new fundraising team. If there's people out there who have bright ideas on fundraising and would like to come down and give us a hand then you're more than welcome. If you can't get down then pop into the shop.

"The RNLI is totally dependent upon generosity and the more we can do in the area the more our name gets widely known. The amount of rescues that we're doing is on average around 30 people nationwide every day. The whole of the funding from that comes from generosity.

"The fundraising team usually organises a flag day and we've done events in the past where we've had a model boatshow, love your lifeboat day where people were able to have a look around the lifeboat, go on board and be shown around. But to do that, we need a team of willing volunteers to give a few hours here and there to be able to let us do the work that we do."

Anyone who is interested can go to an event on Thursday (17th November) between 4.30pm and 6.30pm. Alternatively, the RNLI shop is open from 11am every day.

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