This August two delegates from Roehampton travelled to Hertford University to take part in RAG conference 2016. RAG Conference is a huge meeting of universities RAG committees, Sabbatical officers, and staff, all coming together to learn key skills for running charity events throughout the year as well as networking with charities and each other.

As one of the delegates I was incredibly excited to attend, not so excited about the 6am wakeup call but even so, it was an event that was well worth the effort. RAG Conference is not your usual everyday conference, yes it may have seminars and speeches but they are far from the format of your University lectures.

The very first talk we went to was the welcome and keynotes. Normally this is someone talking about why everyone is here, thanking everyone for coming, as well as a story or two. What was our Keynote on? Harry Potter. It sounds crazy but it all makes a lot of sense, linking how the order of the phoenix and Dumbledore’s Army are very similar to charity fundraisers, fighting only to make the world better.

After this we could go to a number of sessions that were of our own choice, and oh boy what a choice we had, anything from how story telling helps fundraising to how to Brand yourself. However ironically the one that stood out to me the most was “How to run events the Disney way”. I do admit, I ended up in this seminar by coincidence as the other one was cancelled, however this seminar taught me all about how to use Disney’s format for charity events…and of course we had several Disney sing alongs in between but that’s not the point. This seminar taught me the four keys to Disney’s success and how to use them within RAG, and was one of the most intriguing seminars I have ever been to.

This conference was an incredible experience, full of incredibly motivated happy individuals from all across the country with the simple aim of raising as much money as possible to make the world a better place. It may be an incredibly difficult challenge and a very long journey to succeed, but its going to be one hell of a story to tell at the end!