The 99-year-old war veteran who is raising money for NHS charities by walking laps of his back garden has raised more than £14m, smashing the record for a single fundraising campaign on JustGiving.
Captain Tom Moore, who will celebrate his 100th birthday on 30 April, initially set out to raise £1,000 for NHS Charities Together by walking 100 25-metre laps of his Bedfordshire garden, completing 10 laps a day.
He raised £70,000 on the first day of his campaign on 8 April, and at the time of publication had raised £14.6m, the largest total raised in a single campaign on the online fundraising platform JustGiving.
JustGiving donated £100,000 to the campaign after it reached £10m.
The money raised will be used for wellbeing packs and rest and recuperation centres for NHS staff on the front line, as well as for electronic devices that patients can use to communicate with their families while in isolation.
Moore’s total beats the previous record of £5.2m set by Stephen Sutton, a teenage blogger who was posthumously awarded an MBE for his efforts to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust.
His mother Jane Sutton tweeted her congratulations to Captain Moore after he broke the record.
My understanding is that Stephen’s total, until today, was the highest total raised by an individual on @JustGiving . That baton has now passed to Captain Tom and could not have gone to a more worthy individual.
— Stephen’s Story (@_StephensStory) April 15, 2020
Moore, who served in India, Myanmar and Indonesia in the Second World War, has completed his planned number of laps but has said he plans to continue.
Moore broke his hip 18 months ago, he told the BBC Breakfast television show, and wanted to repay the NHS for the care he received during his recovery.
“I hope that people will contribute to the NHS fund,” he told the BBC. “They deserve so much more than we could give them. But the best we can do is what we should do.”
The JustGiving page for donations can be found here.