Movers and Shakers: Fundraising

From cycling to Barcelona to a gentle stroll with the dog, fundraising for Parkinsons’ comes in all shapes and sizes. On this week’s episode of Movers and Shakers we explore who’s doing it, what are the biggest money spinners and who exactly benefits from the cash raised.

Left, Hugh Burnaby-Atkins, right, Andy Simons with the Movers and Shakers

We start by comparing our own fundraising activities. For Gillian Lacey-Solymar and Mark Mardell it’s their offspring who have stepped up with feats of running and swimming which have raised substantial sums. (By the way, Nick “Judge” Mostyn who was away for this episode reminded me that his son and daughter are running the London Marathon to raise money for Cure Parkinson’s.)

I have relied on my Romanian rescue dog Sophie to do the heavy lifting. She was the face of Parkinson’s UK’s Walkies for Parkinson’s event in 2024 and a 2025 calendar of Sophie pictures raised more than £4,000 for Cure Parkinson’s.

But it’s Paul Mayhew-Archer who is top of the Movers and Shakers’ chart - his standup comedy show about life as a ‘Parkie’ which he’s taken to Parkinson’s groups across the UK has raised £100,000 so far. (Email us at feedback@moversandshakerspodcast.com. if you would like Paul to bring his show to your group.)

But our first guest Hugh Burnaby-Atkins came up with a fundraising idea that puts walking the dog or even running a marathon in the shade. Last September he and his son climbed Mont Blanc and then paraglided off the summit and back down.

Hugh, an experienced paraglider, explains that he had first attempted this in 2002 but had to give up. some way short of the summit having not trained enough. Then, when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in his mid-50s in 2023, he decided it was now or never.

A family discussion saw his son Eddie volunteer to join him but nearly scupper the whole thing by asking the smart speaker in the kitchen “Alexa, how many people die on Mont Blanc each year?”

“The answer turned out to be more than 50,” says Hugh, “at which point my wife went white and the plan was almost kiboshed.”

But this time the father and son duo trained for months and, despite a last minute hitch when it looked as though a lack of space at the mountain refuge might frustrate them, they managed to complete their mission.

They raised over £40,000 but Hugh explains that the adventure was also a handy way of completing another difficult task - getting the bad news out about his diagnosis:

“You could tell everyone about it by saying, ‘Look, here, sponsor me. I'm doing something incredible,’ and you've got the message out in a way that showed that you weren't done for just yet.”

As one of England’s 2003 Rugby World Cup winning team - not to mention a member of the royal family via his marriage to the Princess Royal’s daughter Zara Phillips - Mike Tindall has a few advantages when it comes to persuading celebrities to take part in one of the most lucrative Parkinson’s fundraising events.

His golf and charity auction day at The Belfry, the Ryder Cup hosting course in Warwickshire, raises a six figure sum for Cure Parkinson’s every year. Mike’s father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s more than twenty years ago but he tells us that it was a meeting on a golf course with Tom Isaacs, the late founder of Cure Parkinson’s, which inspired him to start the event. Tom holed a shot from 95 yards:

“This is a guy who, if you saw him and you didn't know what Parkinson's was, you would think he's in Monty Python doing the funny walks. But, you know, he never let that stop him. Whenever he stood over a golf ball, all the symptoms disappeared. It was amazing.”

His most successful event raised more than £400,000 but he says it is hard to predict in advance how each year will go, with the mood of bidders in the evening’s charity auction critical: “It all comes down to how people are feeling on the night, how the day's gone.”

With the hunt for a cure proving long and difficult, we wonder whether there is a danger of donor fatigue setting in: “There definitely can be donor fatigue, if everything stays the same all the time and you do the same things, and that is always the challenge of putting on an event - making it slightly different than before.”

But he remains optimistic: “I know that there is a cure out there. I'm very confident there is, and we've just got to unlock it.”

Our final guest is Andy Simons, who joined Cure Parkinson’s as head of fundraising after a career in marketing:

“What attracted me more than anything was that this organisation is determined to do itself out of a job. And I thought that's a wonderful thing.”

He says Mike Tindall’s event is hugely important but the charity supports all manner of fundraising events big and small: “We've got two lovely ladies who live with Parkinson's who buy and sell things on eBay for us. So they go to auctions, buy things they know they can sell for more. We've set them up with the Cure Parkinson's eBay shop, and all of the proceeds of that go to Cure Parkinson's.”

But if the charity’s mission is to put itself out of a job there is no sign of that happening soon. He admits that when there is bad news, like the failure last year of the exenatide trial, that can hit fundraising:

“What we feel as an organisation is huge expectation to deliver progress. That's what people want. But there's also an acknowledgement that not every trial can be a raging success - as long as you learn something from it, and you can take that forward, and you're trying to go as fast as you can towards the cure.”

There is intense competition between medical charities for the attention of donors and sadly Parkinson’s has a lower profile than some rarer conditions. But there is the opportunity to create a virtuous circle where imaginative fundraising campaigns generate publicity about Parkinson’s as well as cash and we at Movers and Shakers hope to be part of that.