The country’s first campaign to promote atheism has raised nine times its taget amount less then 24 hours after launching.
The campaign, administered by The British Humanist Society, aimed to raise £5,500-the cost of advertsing on 30 London buses for four weeks.
By last night the campaign had amassed nearly £48,000 from supporters, and will be put towards funding a more ambitious campaign.
Prominent atheist Richard Dawkin has vowed to donate a further £5,500 to the project, which will also benefit from at least £6,000 more from the Gift Aid supplement.
Co-creator of the campaign, comedy writer Ariane Sherine said, “"We could go national, we could have tube posters, different slogans, more buses, advertising inside buses. The sky's the limit - except, of course, there's nothing up there."
Tim Bleakley, managing director sales and marketing CBS Outdoor, which has sold the advertising campaign to the charity, welcomes the renewed interest in outdoor advertising,
“It’s great to see this campaign sparking so much debate. One of the exciting things about what we do is that we are increasingly interacting with, rather than selling to, consumers.
We’ve had several unusual cases of people using buses to get their message across – earlier this year, for example, a lady advertised for an egg donor on London buses, generating many responses. Best of all the campaign generated so much interest and visibility that she now has a baby girl.”
The campaign is due to run in Westminster from January.