ADHD fundraiser Bare Wills' plea after losing £2k in admin error

BBC News

2 days ago

An islander who took on a three-week fundraising challenge for ADHD Jersey is asking people to re-send their donations, after an administrative error refunded all the money.Will Crawford, who calls himself 'Bare Wills', slept outside for 21 days in May for the charity, raising more than £2,300.He was recovering on holiday when he received news that his supporters had been refunded their donation amount because he had forgotten to link his bank details to the fundraising page.ADHD Jersey was intending to use the money to fund its teenage wellbeing programme, but have so far only been able to retrieve £650, due to people re-sending their donations.
Mr Crawford said the error made is typical of how ADHD can present itself."It's just the diversity of my ADHD, I've got two Facebooks, two Instagrams, two emails – I just don't know how I missed it," he said."We have had some funds given back but I feel like people haven't seen it come back into their accounts, so don't know about what has happened."
'We are down to bare bones'
Rachel Boss, chief executive of ADHD Jersey, said retrieving the money back is vital for the charity."This could have happened to any one of us," she said of the mistake. "We've got nearly £700 back so far. If we do get the rest of it back that would be absolutely phenomenal."We are self-funded at the moment, so it's people like Will doing fundraisers like this who are keeping things going - and we are down to bare bones at the moment."Any funding that we get goes directly back to the people with ADHD Jersey. We're launching a teenage wellbeing programme and we need to continue running our STEPS programme."Mr Crawford has created a new fundraising page for the donations.