This isn't about ways to spend a huge fundraising budget, but what you could do if you had the cash knocking about your bank account.

Sadly I suspect none of us have that much loose change: most of us will not even earn it over our entire working career. But let's not get downheartened - what would you do with your £2.5m?

Let me share an idea with you, in case a lottery win in the next few weeks makes you feel like splashing out.

This Christmas the RNLI have launched their virtual gifts catalogue, with a test mailing to half their members and donors. Lifesaving Gifts offers supporters a new and exciting way to help the RNLI save lives at sea.

Running alongside the existing gift catalogue of RNLI-branded merchandise, Lifesaving Gifts has inspirational present ideas to reduce the stress of present-buying. We're hopeful that the RNLI's loyal base will take to charity gifts for Christmas like ducks to water - in the way the wider public has embraced the 'goat-for-Christmas' gift offerings of overseas development charities in recent years.



Gifts range from £12 for three cans of self-heating meals for crew – including sausage and beans and Irish Stew - to RNLI lifejackets for £500. You can get hold of a copy for yourself through the website, and some of the gifts are also being sold on ebay, to raise extra funds.

So far so good, but what's this got to do with spending £2.5m? Well, if you want to make waves this Christmas you can buy a state-of-the-art, super-sophisticated, custom-designed, computer-controlled Tamar class lifeboat. Quite simply the best all-weather lifeboat in service in the world.

Imagine one of those in your Christmas stocking! Perhaps some extremely generous individual will buy a Tamar for the RNLI this Christmas. For the rest of us, who just want to show our support for the ordinary men and women who do extraordinarily brave things as volunteer lifeboat crew, there's always sausage and beans.

John Turner