Count Me In Calendar wins CAF innovation award
Howard Lake | 7 October 2004 | News
Leisure company Whitbread has been awarded the Innovation – Corporate Community Investment with a Difference Award for their Count Me In Calendar Web site, which details charity and awareness campaigns.
The award was made at the recent Corporates and Communities Conference held by Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) in Birmingham.
The awards recognise and reward companies for their Corporate Community Investment (CCI) activities, and are open to businesses of all sizes across the UK.
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The award won by the Count Me In Calendar was for companies who had implemented a particularly original, resourceful project or campaign developed during the period January 2003 to January 2004. The judges were impressed by the site’s innovative linking of Whitbread Community Investment information to charity awareness campaigns.
More than 300 charities and other campaigning organisations feature on the Count Me In Calendar with around 500 campaigns listed over the year. Updated daily, the calendar is divided into eight campaign categories covering Arts & Media, Children & Youth, Education & Learning, Health, Food, Overseas Development, Society & Culture and Environment. It also covers an extensive range of United Nations special days, religious celebrations and national holidays.
Whitbread say that the site achieved nearly two million page impressions in its first year.
Innovation in terms of online achievements is always a risky claim, and of course the facility to list and search for charity campaigns and awareness weeks predates the Count Me In Calendar, which made the move to an online presence only in 2003. Other services such as The Awareness Campaign Register have provided a similar service via the Web for several years, although they have done so by charging for access.
The innovation of the Count Me In Calendar lies in its ability to provide a valuable service that is extensive, with in-depth coverage including video and news links, at no charge by securing the enthusiastic support of a major corporate.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.