Help me raise €4,000 for Friends of the Earth to celebrate reaching the dubious milestone of 40 years of age

On 14 March, I’m going to be 40. Or, as I like to think of it 39 and 12 months. Much catchier.

For those of you who know me (or just like beer) there will of course be an opportunity to commiserate with me over pints of beer, at some yet to be decided venue in or around the date itself. But first, something important.

Rather than having a mid-life crisis (I’ll save that ’til next year) I want to mark it in a significant way. So I decided I’m going to - with your help - raise €4,000 for Friends of the Earth. This is why:

(…this is, as Jennifer Aniston would say, the science bit. You know it already. Feel free to skip…)

Climate change is the most important and urgent issue facing us all today. If strong and fair action isn’t taken soon, global temperatures will increase beyond ’safe’ levels and the world we leave our children will be unrecognisable from the one we grew up in. As the father of two small boys, that’s not something I’m prepared to accept…

Our leaders seem to be doing their best to do nothing. Call me a mad old unreconstructed radical, but I believe the only way forward is to build an international movement of ordinary people demanding real and fair action on climate change. Friends of the Earth will be at the forefront of that movement.

Real and fair action means those of us in the developed world cutting our carbon emissions by at least 40% by 2020.

Friends of the Earth has already achieved a huge amount on meagre resources, thanks largely to their brilliant Director, Oisin Coghlan. But to meet the challenges ahead and continue to be a radical progressive voice for change it needs to raise a whole lot more. So, I’d like you to do three things to help me celebrate turning 40:

1) Make a donation to Friends of the Earth. Click here.  You can do it now.  I’m going to suggest €40, but please give however much or little you can afford, whether that’s €4 or €400. To get things started I’ve made a small donation myself.

2) Raise your voice and take action to pressure our government to take constructive action on climate change, such as implementing a Climate Protection Law. If you sign up to Friends of the Earth they’ll tell you what needs to be done, and make it easy for you to do it. If you want to read more, go here 

3) Make a personal effort to reduce your carbon output this year, and every year. I won’t get all preachy about flights, cars, and eating less meat - you know what you need to do.

If on the off-chance you were planning to get me a big fancy birthday present , thank you, but don’t. Seriously, don’t. Give the money to Friends of the Earth instead. I have everything I need and I don’t want to encourage any more needless consumption. If you do go ahead and get me something I’ll sell it and give the money to Friends of the Earth myself. Which wouldn’t be very efficient now, would it?

You might be thinking I’m asking you to sponsor me to do nothing more onerous than turning 40 - no 10k run, no parachute jump, no mountain trek. You’re right. I could pretend that I’m going to do the Great Ireland Run or the St Patricks Day 5k. But you know it wouldn’t happen. I’d never get the time to train and it’d all go horribly wrong. So instead, I thought I’d just ask you nicely to make a modest contribution to an organisation that means an awful lot to me. I do hope you’ll help out.

Thanks ever so much.

Damian.

PS: It turns out myself and Sean Triner from Pareto Fundraising were born only days apart (crucially, he’s 6 days older than me) and we then both end up running fundraising agencies (although on opposite sides of the world). Stranger still, we both decide to use the occasion of our fortieth birthdays to raise money for causes we care about. While I’m fairly certain we came up with the plans independently, I’m going to claim that I just got in there first, and he nicked the idea from me. But that’s OK, because I regularly nick loads of ideas from Sean - and you should too, he’s a fundraising genius. Once you’ve made a donation to Friends of the Earth, you should also visit Sean’s page and make a gift to Marie Stopes.