One of the easy ways you can help us raise funds is via Give as You Live when you are making purchases online.

This will provide a small commission to us on all the retailers who are signed up to the scheme and at no cost to you and hopefully at very little effort on your part.

You first need to join Give as You Live, and select the River Thames Boat Project as your cause.

You can do this by using this special link and we will obtain an additional £5.

The Give as You Live website lists all of the retailers to click through, or you can use a price comparison function.

From the website you can also check how much you have raised.

Why Give as you Live? We have looked at this type of site before (and tried a few), but Give as you Live appears to be less intrusive to users, provides a better payment rate, with greater transparency and support for the charity, and provides you with the ability to track how much you have raised.

Who can use it? Anyone. Please invite friends and family. You can either send them the invite link above or create your own using the ‘recruit your friends and get a free £5 donation’ option.

We would of course appreciate it if they specify the River Thames Boat Project as their cause!

Here is a quick video of how it all works.

And please tell us what you think. Are you comfortable with this sort of fundraising? Have you come across better options or other things we should look at? Please email pippa@thamesboatproject.org.