Dunkirque Spirit..ideas to help POE

Hi friends, first of all i'd like to apologise to my good lady for keeping her awake most of the night by tossing and turning as I pondered ways of helping POE. You may be aware that this fantastic site is in danger of collapse through lack of funding. I have come up with a few ideas that could help and I hope other members will use this thread to post there own ideas. I think we can put them into 2 catogries, Member driven and 'staff' driven.  Here are a number of my ideas-

Member Driven

1)  On-line auction - this would run on the lines of 'e-bay but poe members would 'donate' an unwanted item, other members would bid for it and the highest bid would go to POE funds. (It would have to be small items though, ie keepsakes, jewelry and the like because of the cost of postage).

2)  on-line Bring & Buy sale, this would work like the Church Hall sales in the Uk. A member would donate an item, the money from the sale would go to POE .

3) A 'world of pebbles' members could gather a small pebble from a river, beach, historic site or place of interest and offer it to other interested members for a small token sum, to be passed to the POE fund. If members worldwide collected these they would have a unique collection of pebbles from all over the world, a piece of England, America, Europe, Italy, Australia, it goes on. lol

4) Amuture Photograpers (Poe members), could approach small shop keepers, publicans, tea rooms of interest in their area and ask them for a small donation to Poe., if they could take an interesting picture of their business ie. shop front. and post it on Poe in the usual way. The interested shop keeper would, out of self interest look at poe,and draw the attention of his customers to the wonderfull Poe site.

POE Staff Driven

1) Sale of a 'certificate' to POE members for a 'small' donation to POE. The certificate could be A4 size, featuring St George or simular and the wording ' This is to certify that ...... is a honerable member of the 'Knights of POE' .......... This could be displayed with pride on the members wall/ office wall etc. as a reminder of England etc.

2) aproaching  sites such as English Heritage, English Tourist boards, local and County councils who wish to promote tourism in their district, for site sponsership or funding grants etc

3) approach wealthy patriotic business people such as Richard Branson, Debra Meeden (?) (from the Tv show Dragons Den, she has business interests in tourism in the West country. Sir Allen Sugar of Tv's Aprhentice fame, the list goes on and you are only asking for sponsership to a very sucessfull site. They could offer help in many ways such as free advice, equiptment, etc

 

These are a few ideas, some good, some maybe not so goodbut at least they are ideas, I hope other POE members can submit ideas on this thread too?

  but how do we get it moving 'for real'.