Please do take a moment to read this post, I was approached by Tessa, from Shareagift recently who asked if she could write a sponsored guest post for my blog. I agreed eagerly as I think the concept of her business is fantastic and is an outstanding idea for birthdays, christenings etc. Tessa is starting to build her business and needs lots of marketing so if you like the concept please do share it…
Also if you read to the end of the post you will see she offered my family and I a rather lovely treat which we couldn’t accept but were immensely flattered all the day.
A Mum’s best magic trick!
I’d like to invite you to take a moment, and picture if you will, that familiar scene – your son or daughter’s last birthday party: The aftermath…
That glorious sea of wrapping paper and coloured ribbon strewn about your living room; sweet-wrappers and bits of birthday cake nestled in amongst the sofa cushions; and an army of abandoned plastic toys and their boxes enjoying a brief spell in the limelight before they head to the bin.
But wait! What if that pile of plastic toys suddenly transformed into a new bicycle. Or a climbing frame. Or a dolls house?
What’s the magic I hear you cry?! Well it’s dead simple – I’d like to introduce you to our website, Shareagift.com, which helps groups of friends collect money easily online. We’re a small company based in London, we just launched last year and since then we’ve had the most amazing response from parents using the site.
Mum’s have created Gift Pages online for their children’s birthdays asking friends and family to chip in towards that bike, rather than send a plastic toy; parents using the site to collect money for class thank you gifts for teachers; groups collecting subscriptions for sports teams and activity clubs – even friends collecting cash for an expectant couple’s first 6 months worth of nappies!
So while I’m afraid we can’t offer any helpful advice on breast-pumps or baby-wipes, road-side peeing or packed lunches, we hope you might find our site useful. We don’t charge any admin fees, friends can contribute with a credit or debit card online and it’s all safely processed through PayPal. You just create a personalised Gift Page on the site, send it to your friends via email or Facebook, then collect the cash and buy the gift.
So I really hope you’ll visit the site. We wanted to create a Gift Page for Jane and her family, to spend a day out together and have some fun after all the tough times they’ve been through recently. Sweetly though, she is far too modest to let us do it on her site, but I hope perhaps one of her readers might have a go instead 
. Otherwise Jane, all the best to you and your family, we love your blog and hope you keep on making us laugh for many posts to come.
Please check out the site on www.shareagift.com
Excellent idea
I presume it would work in Ireland too?
Hi Blue Sky, this is Tessa from Shareagift – so glad you like our site! Yes, it works worldwide – currently you can collect funds in £ / $ / € and contributions can be made in nearly any currency
Thanks Tessa
What a brilliant idea! I’m always trying to get family to do this as they are rather keen on the plastic tat. A website would help.
Great! We’ve got a hilarious story of a family in the US using Shareagift to get the Star Wars Lego ‘Death Star’ for their 7 year old – am hopefully going to write about it on our blog (blog.shareagift.com) shortly so watch this space (no pun intended!)
what a simple but cleaver idea and rather than running round the supermarket in a stress 2 hours before a party trying to find something for a child I barely know, I could simply do this.
Fab!
Glad you like it Gemma – we’ve had quite a few mums also use the site to organise class gifts for teachers – might be helpful
Great idea – bit like the whole wedding gift list concept but for kids. Not sure I’d use it for a child I knew really well, as I love choosing gifts myself. But would definitely use it in the way Gemma suggested, for a child I didn’t know so well. Choosing gifts for kids you hardly know is really tricky!
He hee, brilliant – ‘wedding gift list for kids’ – I might just use that line Molly if I may!
It’s a brilliant idea!
Thanks. LOVE your gravatar photo!
A really great idea, especially if the child has a clear idea of what they are saving for or would like. It’s always so difficult to know what children have aswell, yet this takes the duplicate gifts hell away.
This is a great idea…..I’m thinking of using it for my Daughters baptism!! x
I love this idea!!! I certainly will be giving this a go!
Please do – it’s free as well so please have a go, try out a test page if you like to see how it works, hope you like it!
I love this idea. My son’s head teacher is leaving this year and I now the school secretary is struggling with collecting money without him noticing! I am going to send this over now
Brilliant! Let me know if he / she needs a hand at all – happy to help tessa@shareagift.com