As mentioned last week, we stayed on in the UK to exhibit at the Losing My Religion conference. We did what we could to improve our exhibition framework and then took to the London ExCeL on Sunday for a day of face-to-face fundraising.

Our presence was almost the same as we had at the Muslim Lifestyle Show. But whilst we had previous success engaging people as they walked past, that wasn't the case this time. There was another charity behind us, another next to us and few elsewhere. So we split our team into two and sent one to the break-out area where they could approach people walking in and out of the main lecture hall. It isn't easy when you don't have the stand to back you up, but we toughened up and it worked out well. Insha-Allah, we'll do this at future events too.

While the event wasn't as large as MLS, we did achieve similar success. Over the course of 1 day, monthly donations increased by £220 and we received £216 in 1-time donations. It doesn't sound like much, but when you remember that monthly donations go on for an average of 5 years, it works out to be around £13,200.

It's worth noting that the monthly donations were spread across 30 donors. This is significant because the more donors we take onboard, the less impact we'll feel if any drop off. We're now up to 155 donors in total, contributing $2,830 each month. We're still far from our minimum requirements, but (insha-Allah) we're on our way!

Being new to the world of face-to-face fundraising, every show we attend helps us identify areas for improvement. And we're now working on ways to overcome the biggest obstacles that keep people from donating on the spot.

Meanwhile, as an aside, we got to pitch overcome.tv to Nouman Ali Khan, founder of Bayyinah. He was there as a speaker and our pitch definitely struck a chord as he gave us his personal contact details so we could follow up with him.

As tough and tiring as it is, face-to-face fundraising at Islamic events is definitely a part of our fund-raising strategy. We don't have any solid plans for the next event, but if you know of any we could exhibit at, please let us know.

And if you're thinking about volunteering for future events, please drop us a line. Volunteering is clearly a positive experience as our team from MLS didn't just come back to volunteer again at Losing My Religion, but they're now asking when the next event will be? That says a lot! :)