Rope4Hope: Jump Rope for Cancer Research UK with Mandy Shaw (Ep. 35)

Dizzy Skips (00:40)
Mandy Shaw, I’m so glad to welcome you back to the Jump Rope Podcast. We’ve got some exciting updates about Rope4Hope.

Mandy (00:44)
I know, they’d be setting up vicious rumours about us, wouldn’t they, Dizzy? Yeah, I know. Yeah, we have got two interesting and hopefully exciting updates to share with people.

Dizzy Skips (00:50)
Right, they spend a lot of time together.

So can I call back real quick just for

those who maybe didn’t see our earlier podcasts, Rope4Hope is a fundraising benefit for Cancer Research UK where people can get together and skip, get sponsored, and then raise funds for Cancer Research UK. And I think one of the things we talked about initially was one of the goals was not only to raise money for cancer, but maybe to set a world record for the total number of people skipping at once in the UK.

Mandy (01:28)
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that was our absolute core of the idea is a benefit, it is a fundraiser to raise vital funds for Cancer Research and all their life-saving work. Absolutely. And that remains at the core of the event. The main thing that’s changed is that currently, and I use the word currently because still, if there are any millionaires out there and they want to jump in and help us.

then there’s still time to do that. But currently we do not have a main sponsor to help us achieve the official Guinness World Record. However, actually what that’s done in a way is free us up to run the event how we want to, include as many people as we can without actually being restricted by all the rules and regulations that we were having to comply with.

Dizzy Skips (02:24)
Sure.

Mandy (02:24)
So

we are still uniting communities. We are still working with schools. We still want businesses and individuals to come together on Saturday the 13th of September at 11 o’clock, a bit before that probably, because there’ll be some prep time and things to do. And we’re actually going to base our efforts now still on the core values of getting a Guinness World Record, but it’s going to be the online version. So this means that anybody, literally anywhere,

who can tune in at that time of the day on that day will be able to take part. So like we were discussing, we’ve still got all the individual physical and mental health benefits. We have the core values of corporates and organisations, schools and businesses making a difference and bringing their respective communities together. And ultimately we’re raising money for Cancer Research, which has always been what our goal was.

Dizzy Skips (03:00)
Cool.

Yeah.

Mandy (03:21)
So that’s the first bit of news to share. And the second bit of news to share is that we do now have our official Cancer Research sign up page. So folks can click on the link that hopefully we’ll put in there in the show notes. And yeah, that’s where you can basically do a very easy five minute sign up process and you can register to take part. There it is. Clever tech again.

Dizzy Skips (03:31)
Yes.

Mandy (03:47)
Oh, blow my mind. So, yeah, you click on the link that we will put in the show notes and this is the page that will come up. Currently, there’s only myself and one of the other committee members that have explored this. This was literally launched Thursday or Friday of last week. So it is really new. And you basically scroll down to where it says giving pages.

Dizzy Skips (03:47)
You

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mandy (04:13)
And

somewhere there, it’s on my screen, it’s a bit small. It says create a giving page. So, yep, you would click on that. ⁓ want to unless you’ve already skipped for Cancer Research, you have to create a new giving page. If you’ve already skipped for Cancer Research or you already have a giving page, then you can click on that and follow the prompts through from that angle. But basically what you want to do is create a new giving page. ⁓

Dizzy Skips (04:18)
Right, right here.

To join you need an account.

Okay.

Okay.

Mandy (04:40)
Yeah, be careful what personal details you put in there, Dizzy. Actually, I’ve just thought about that.

Dizzy Skips (04:45)
Yeah, yeah, I

I need to create an account. Okay.

Mandy (04:47)
Yeah, I think you want to create one. yeah.

Yeah we’re just trying to do this so that anybody that is a bit like me and a bit kind of technophobe, not quite sure what you’re letting yourself in for, hopefully showing you this process with Dizzy will help you talk you through it. Okay so create your giving page, you just need to put in some details, you can put made up stuff if you want.

Dizzy Skips (05:09)
So I create my giving page title.

Mandy (05:18)
Keep your security safe.

Dizzy Skips (05:18)
countries

States, why are we asking for this? Address line, okay. So I will edit this out.

Do you, I wonder if I can do a PO box. ⁓

All right, so Red Wing 55066, what are we asking? Staying in touch, email, post, phone.

Change your mind, contact us, personal declaration confirmed that I agree to Cancer Research’s. Okay, so I agree.

Mandy (05:48)
So that’s just you putting in some of your contact details basically. ⁓

then you can choose why you’re fundraising. Sometimes it’s in memory of somebody, sometimes it’s because you believe in a specific cause. ⁓

Dizzy Skips (05:58)
Mm-hmm

For me,

it’s my stepmom has had it four times and beat it. So I wanna help research into, so I actually don’t care. Wherever the need is greatest. So continue nearly there. So.

Mandy (06:07)
my goodness, I’m not sure I knew that. bless you.

Yeah, that’s what I put wherever the need is greatest. So then you give your

page. This is your personal page, remember, so you can give it a name, anything you like.

And then you’ll see at the bottom, it’s creating a page link that is personalised to you.

Dizzy Skips (06:35)
Okay. yeah. So I want to, I actually, I’m to just take this.

Mandy (06:37)
See, so that’s automatically created your giving page

and then you can create giving page and then it will cleverly do that. So there we are. Dizzy skips for Rope4Hope. Amazing. Then you’ll see the top right hand corner there. You’ve got a little box with a D in it and a downwards arrow top right hand corner. If you click on that and then click on your dashboard.

Dizzy Skips (06:58)
Right.

Okay.

Mandy (07:03)
then ⁓ somewhere Team pages go where it says Team pages

Dizzy Skips (07:09)
so I can join Team or I can create a Team.

Mandy (07:10)
And then it says, well,

you can either say Join Team and then it will give my Team and Natalie’s Team, or you can create your own Team. know, if anybody else, you know, wants to join in with you, then, then they would join your Team and then be part of your fundraising, if you like, if, that’s what they choose to do.

Dizzy Skips (07:17)
Mm-hmm.

This is you, right? No.

Mandy (07:31)
No,

mine is… Mandy’s House is the one you need to try and find, is it in there somewhere?

Dizzy Skips (07:40)
of them. Alright, so I’ll just search Mandy’s House.

Mandy (07:43)
Mandy’s

House Team, I think I called mine.

Dizzy Skips (07:46)
Mandy’s house Team, join this Team.

Mandy (07:47)
There you go. That’s

the one.

Dizzy Skips (07:49)
Please select the giving page to link to this Team. Choose this giving page.

Mandy (07:53)
There you go. So now if you scroll down, you’ll be listed under my Team, hopefully. There you go. There he is. He’s in. You’re part of it. Part of Team Mandy’s house. So you see that wasn’t too difficult, was it? It’s quite straightforward. So you click on the Super Team page. That’s what it’s called. Click on the Rope4Hope Super Team page.

Dizzy Skips (07:58)
There we go. Look at that. I’m part of Team Mandy. Woo! All right. This is great. We’re going to raise some funds.

No.

Mandy (08:22)
You create your own giving page, then you go up to the little box that’s got your initial in top right hand corner, click on dashboard, follow the links through to create your Team or join an existing Team. And yeah, that’s you set up to be involved as much or as little as you wish to be.

Dizzy Skips (08:28)
Yeah, your little profile thing.

Right.

That’s so great. And so now, I would refer people to my giving page. So here this, ⁓ I guess you can’t see the address bar of the browser, but this page is fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/dizzy-skips/ So, and that’s what I would give out to my friends who want to sponsor and help contribute.

Mandy (08:50)
Yep, yep, so you can scroll up to the, sorry.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s it. that’s the URL that you Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Dizzy Skips (09:12)
great. I noticed they’ve got some tips down here too, like add video to triple your donations. They’ve got some encouragement for what you can do to your page to kind of get more participation, which is great.

Mandy (09:22)
Yes, exactly. Yeah, so you can add a short video, you can add a photo, you can add some extra, I think you can even add like little updates as you go along and share those with your friends and family as well.

Dizzy Skips (09:35)
yeah.

Yep, there’s updates. can add a photo. You can ⁓ put in, if someone’s giving you money offline, you can add that money in here as well.

Mandy (09:46)
Yeah and your individual friends and supporters they can put their own little messages in when they donate as well.

Dizzy Skips (09:54)
Sure, yeah, and you can actually even

connect it over to Facebook to make a Facebook fundraiser. This is great, so now that I’ve set this up, I can go in and really personalize my page to try and inspire people to give.

Mandy (09:59)
Yeah.

Exactly, yeah, exactly. And you’ll be…

Dizzy Skips (10:10)
Great, if only I knew something about technology.

Mandy (10:14)
I mean, yeah, it’s as straightforward as that, you know, and that’s how easy it is for people to, we’re not really calling it registration now as such. This is more like a sign up process where you can start and immediately any money is donated to these pages apart from the processing costs like for credit cards, et cetera. All of that money instantly goes to Cancer Research. So.

Dizzy Skips (10:18)
Yeah.

Sure.

That’s so cool.

Mandy (10:42)
even before

the event happens in September, we are contributing to their fundraising, we’re contributing to their life-saving work. yeah, I mean, it’s just, it’s an amazing point in time for the project to get this up and running.

Dizzy Skips (10:47)
That’s awesome.

Yeah, you know, the idea of setting a world record and stuff is fun. ⁓ But like you said, this has always been about raising funds for Cancer Research. And one of the things that I like about the change,

when we were talking about it before, there were rules, right? Like once you started skipping, you had to skip for three minutes and you could make a voluntary stop for 10 seconds or less. But if you goofed up, then you were out and that’s pressure, you know? And now it’s just all fun. Like we had this virtual meetup. People throughout the UK could organize in-person meetups and get together as jumpers together and

Mandy (11:12)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Dizzy Skips (11:35)
fundraise. I really like the idea that it’s more inclusive and it’s all happy and there’s no stress. There’s no, we gonna make the, you know, it’s like let’s get out there and just have fun and contribute to Cancer Research.

Mandy (11:41)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, and obviously we’re still going to count how many people take part. And if we if we reach, you know, the dizzy heights of several hundred or a few thousand people joining in, we can say we’ve got an unofficial world record. And then we’ll springboard into next year. And who knows, you know, where it might lead us. So all things happen for a reason. And this could actually be a blessing in disguise.

Dizzy Skips (11:50)
Sure. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sure.

That’s right.

Yeah, yeah, this is cool. So on the day of, where are you gonna be?

Mandy (12:18)
Yeah, I am going to be at Basecamp, which is my local village school. They are going to be basecamp for the for the project. And so all of the people that are not at that school will still be able to dial in. And what we’re to do is again, I don’t really get the tech. I always say that when we have these conversations, but I am very well informed that it’s going to be

Dizzy Skips (12:24)
Okay.

Okay.

Mandy (12:45)
as straightforward as setting up multiple Zoom calls. So participants will be given a link to a Zoom call. They dial in at the allotted time and we’ll have several monitors set up, monitored by, marshals and they will tick people off as they come up on their screen and they’re let in from the waiting room and things like that. So, even if you’re not at basecamp,

Dizzy Skips (12:49)
Okay.

Mandy (13:08)
you will still be able to dial in exactly as if we were doing it, you know, as an ⁓ official Guinness World Record. But instead of one person being in the picture frame, you could have half a dozen or more people in the picture frame, you know, as long as you’re kind of like viewed and you kind of see each other. We’ve got some sort of or you’ve got a friend standing on a chair holding the camera, you know, so we can see everybody.

Dizzy Skips (13:20)
Sure.

Right.

Right, right.

Mandy (13:33)
Health and safety though, you know, don’t do that if it’s dangerous. ⁓

Dizzy Skips (13:35)
Yeah.

Yeah, that’s like standing

up on a limestone block. Like who would do that?

Mandy (13:41)
Who would do that, Dizzy – it’s crazy talk.

Dizzy Skips (13:45)
I like that. I mean, if I were able to, I mean, whether or not I’m in the UK, if I can get a bunch of friends together, we can all kind of dial in at once as long as we either have a good tripod to hold the camera for us or a volunteer camera person so that we can be seen and counted.

Mandy (14:03)
Yeah,

absolutely. Yeah, that’s how it’s going to work.

Dizzy Skips (14:07)
It’s so fun, it’s exciting. I still wanna come over there for it. mean, if I could afford it, if I can swing it, that would be great. just to be, yeah, that’d be fun.

Mandy (14:09)
Yeah.

You

Yeah, I would love to have you. Yeah, I’d love to have you over.

Yeah, yeah.

Dizzy Skips (14:24)
Well, this is terrific. So I will put links in the show notes for this and recap some of the steps for signing up so that ⁓ people who wanna sign up can make their own giving pages and make their own Team if they want or join your Team or join a Team. I think that’s terrific. Any other things that you want people to know about this event?

Mandy (14:33)
Amazing. Yeah.

The motto I’ve put on the latest newsletter, it says, our nation, your rope, their hope. And that kind of is like, bring everybody together, grab a skipping rope, do some good for Cancer Research. And, you know, that’s the event in its simplicity, in its nutshell, that’s what it’s about.

Dizzy Skips (15:08)
Yeah, it’s awesome. And I’ve said in previous conversations that so many of the people that I have met that live in the UK who jump rope were either exposed to jumping rope as an adult through fundraisers like this or fell in love with it. They knew about jump rope, but hey, once we got into a challenge or once we set a goal and started jumping, they fell in love.

Mandy (15:25)
Yeah.

Dizzy Skips (15:34)
So I love that trickle down effect too. This is just the gift that keeps on giving, right? Like we go, we get some contributions for Cancer Research, which is awesome, but it also benefits us, benefits the people around us. So I think this is ⁓ a win, win, win.

Mandy (15:37)
Yeah, absolutely it is,

Yep, it always has been and that’s what’s been the whole goal of it. We’re going to skip ahead. We’re going to forge ahead with the same energy that we were always doing ⁓ and see how many people we can rope in. Nice.

Dizzy Skips (15:54)
Yep.

There we go, skip, jump, and hop toward Cancer Research. That sounds great.

Well, thank you so much, Mandy. I just think it’s wonderful that you have put so much time and effort into organizing this. And I’m sure it might’ve felt like a little bit of a letdown not to be able to pursue the Guinness World Record. But there’s all sorts of other benefits to this. The core message is still there. And now people can participate whether they can jump or not. They can participate from anywhere in the world, which is great.

Mandy (16:25)
Absolutely.

Yep.

Yep, absolutely.

Dizzy Skips (16:39)
Right on. Well, let’s do it. Woo. All right.

Mandy (16:41)
Yes, let’s! Woohoo!