Farmer Olly raises £100k for North West Air Ambulance with tractor birthday bumper shout-outs

Farmer Olly Harrison has raised an incredible £100,000 for North West Air Ambulance charity by doing birthday shout-outs on the bumper of his tractor.

Olly, who has a farm in Tarbock, came up with the idea for a ‘birthday bumper’ after being regularly asked to mention special occasions on his Olly Blogs YouTube channel.

He decided to add the names of people celebrating to his tractor bumper in return for a donation to NWAA.

Now, after thousands of mentions, he’s topped a fantastic six-figure mark with his fundraising.

Olly says: “I started doing videos every day on YouTube at the beginning of Covid, just over five years ago, and because people knew I was doing one every day they’d say, ‘it’s my little boy’s birthday or my dad’s birthday, can you give them a mention?’ so I would.

“I ended up having more and more people asking and it got to the point where there were 10 or 15 a day, so I thought I should try and get some extra value for someone out of it.

“I’ve done some fundraising for North West Air Ambulance before so I set up a Just Giving for the Birthday Bumper and said, if anyone wants a birthday mention they need to go onto that page, put in the name of the person’s birthday and make a donation, as little or as much as you want.

“That meant I was able to raise money and it also gave me a list every day, because before I was getting messages on Instagram, on Facebook, everywhere, and sometimes I’d forget one.

“Now they’re all in one place so every day I just log on, it tells me the day’s donations along with the names, and I have a drywipe board to write them on.”

44-year-old Olly admits he’s been surprised by how very popular his Birthday Bumper has become.

“The whole thing started on the first day of Covid when I did something for the BBC about what we were doing on the farm,” he explains. “I put it out on social media and the next day I did it again and I had a few teachers get in touch to ask if they could use it for online learning.

“I said I’d put it on YouTube and send them a link just because it was easier and it carried on from there.

I have about 150,000 subscribers for my YouTube channel now and I’ve done about 2,000 videos.

“When I launched the Birthday Bumper I thought there might be one or two each day and it might raise £20-£30 a day, but some days it can be £200-£300 which is madness – it’s something so simple but we’ve managed to extract the value to help the charity.”

Olly, who has a fianceé and three children aged 12, three and nearly two years old, says he chose NWAA because it’s a charity particularly close to his own heart and other farmers.

“I haven’t had to use the Air Ambulance myself but I do know people who have, I’ve seen it land many times to help people, and even two weeks ago it landed in a neighbour’s field.

“If you’re in a field and you have a problem, a normal ambulance can’t get to you. I don’t like the fact that North West Air Ambulance is completely funded by charitable donations, so I always think it’s a really worthy cause.”