A breast cancer charity being launched this week intends to employ a pyramid fundraising model and social networking in an effort to raise £1m in its first year of existence.

The charity, Too Many Women, will ask 201 supporters - known as team ambassadors - to raise £500 each and get nine friends to do the same.  The concept has aroused the interest of various celebrities, with Gwyneth Paltrow and Sophie Winkleman among those to have pledged to participate.

The charity’s founders, Harry Becher and Catriona Blampied, are business partners whose mothers have both been diagnosed with the disease.  Becher lost his mother in 2008.

Becher formerly worked for Ben Elliot’s concierge service Quintessentially in London and Los Angeles, before setting up IQ Partners, a business dealing with celebrities, with Blampied.

By promoting the cause through social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, Becher and Blampied hope that the pyramid fundraising model will be highly accessible and at the same time enable bonds to be created between those who have been affected by breast cancer.

It was described by one newspaper columnist as “Arki Busson’s ARK dinner for the younger (poorer) generation and a fervent farewell wave to the archaic tombola and auction scenario”.