Corporate fundraising round up – the festive edition
Melanie May | 13 December 2019 | News
All around the country companies are supporting good causes this Christmas, from Arrow Self Drive, which has become ‘Arrow Elf Drive’ for two Yorkshire hospices, to Aura Care Living, which is working with Re-Engage and offering free Christmas stays.
PHMG’s Santa Dashes raise over £15,000 for charity
Over £15,000 has been raised by PHMG staff for a range of charities, by participating in the PHMG Foundation’s global Santa Dashes. More than 300 Santas and four-legged festive friends took to the streets of Media City at the start of December, raising more than £9,000, followed by PHMG staff in Santa Dashes on the 7 and 8 December in the United States, Canada and Australia, taking the total to over £15,000. Since its launch in 2013, the Dash has raised over £500,000 for more than 70 employee-chosen charities so far. Mind, Cancer Research UK, The National Alliance on Mental Illness, SOS Children’s Villages Illinois and the Red Cross are the chosen charities for 2019.
#Cards4Change is here! Create a climate change inspired e-card in @Photoshop or @AdobeSpark
Every time you share with #Cards4Change and tag @AdobeUK we’ll donate to @ClimateGroup https://t.co/zAoc7xpfvOAdvertisement
Start creating, we’ll get donating! pic.twitter.com/Yt7Ekpjw9Y
— Adobe UK (@AdobeUK) December 2, 2019
Adobe Creative Cloud & The Climate Group
Adobe Creative Cloud is challenging people to create this festive season’s most sharable e-card or meme around climate change. Every time a card is posted online or shared, it will donate £3.50 to The Climate Group. It is asking people to post on Twitter using #cards4change and @adobeUK, and on Instagram using #cards4change and @adobe.
John Lewis & Waitrose with FareShare
More than 1000 people across the country have been invited to enjoy a festive feast hosted by Waitrose & Partners and John Lewis & Partners, as part of the retailers’ campaign to bring people together this Christmas. FareShare has nominated more than 50 charities to take part, ranging from homeless hostels to lunch groups for the elderly, with the people they support and volunteers coming together for a Christmas dinner served by Partners from John Lewis and Waitrose. Some well-known faces will be giving a helping hand too, including sports personality Clare Balding and cricket star Jonathan Agnew. The company will also be making a £150,000 donation to FareShare.
In London? Come say hello at our Christmas Giving Store, popping up in Covent Garden, Thursday – Sunday this week 🎄#ShopForOthers pic.twitter.com/shcDQ8CueH
— Sainsbury's (@sainsburys) December 4, 2019
Sainsbury’s Help Brighten a Million Christmases
Sainsbury’s has launched its biggest ever Christmas charity drive, calling for “urgently required donations” from any shop. The grocer, along with subsidiary Argos, have provided in-store donation boxes for customers to ramp up their donation scheme. The “Help Brighten a Million Christmases” campaign is encouraging one million food and toy donations in stores across the UK from today, with the initiative running in partnership with thousands of charities, who will distribute the items to local communities in time for Christmas.
Meet #Kidsmas, our new fundraising campaign that lets you build a customisable snowman and throw snowballs at your friends and family! ⛄
Each snowball thrown is a donation to help vulnerable children. 💚
Getting involved is as easy as 1, 2, 3… https://t.co/jD05PLCDro pic.twitter.com/7cyBjZdyw6
— Barnardo’s (@barnardos) November 23, 2019
Nick Jr. & Barnardo’s
Nick Jr. is partnering with Barnardo’s this Christmas with an on air competition in support of the charity’s Kidsmas campaign, which is supporting vulnerable children across the UK during the festive season. The competition will give away one prize bundle each day to a lucky winner until 24 December. For every prize won, Nick Jr. will also include a donation to Barnardo’s Kidsmas campaign. Kids can enter the competition via the Nick Jr. website by selecting the name of a character they see within a snow globe on-air.
Christmas Tree World & Borneo Nature Foundation
UK supplier of artificial Christmas trees Christmas Tree World has joined forces with Borneo Nature Foundation (BNF), pledging ‘a tree for every customer’ in a partnership which will see a new tree planted in the Borneo rainforest for every order placed on their site. Christmas Tree World will pay for a seedling to be planted in Borneo for every order placed on the website, and it is expected that up to 25,000 trees will be planted by Christmas Tree World in 2019 alone, which could see an area of over 50 hectares reforested.
Aqua Shard & Teenage Cancer Trust
Aqua Shard has partnered with Teenage Cancer Trust over the festive season to raise money for young people with cancer. The restaurant will be adding an optional £1 to every bill, and 50% of sales from a special Christmas drink and dessert will also be donated to Teenage Cancer Trust. The bespoke Christmas drink and dessert is being served throughout the festive season from 14 November to 1 January, and is a white chocolate mousse with Veuve Clicquot Champagne jelly and spice wine sorbet.
Aura Care Living & Re-Engage
Care home and retirement village company Aura Care Living has chosen Re-Engage (formerly ‘Contact the Elderly’) as its national Charity of the Year. The campaign has a focus on loneliness in the elderly, and kicked off with Aura Care Living offering a free two-night stay in each of its Care Homes for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day nights. The chosen nominees are invited to stay at each of the care homes from mid-morning on Christmas Eve, in time for lunch; right through until Boxing Day morning. Those nominees who don’t qualify are being welcomed by Re-engage to take part in its Community Christmas campaign. In addition, Aura Care Living will notify these nominees of their own community events, hosted throughout the year in each of their Cirencester and Camberley homes to help combat loneliness.
Arrow Self Drive & hospices
Arrow Self Drive is supplying two Yorkshire-based hospices with free transportation to support their Christmas fundraising for the third year running, rebranding 100 vans for the Christmas campaign by changing the logos from Arrow Self Drive to ‘Arrow Elf Drive’. Both hospices are dressing their drivers as elves for their tree collections to join in the theme. Arrow Self Drive will provide three different sized vehicles to Wakefield Hospice and two to Forget Me Not Children’s Hospice, which are offering residents across Huddersfield and Wakefield an opportunity to dispose of unwanted Christmas trees after the festive season. All proceeds from the charity Christmas tree sales and collections go to support the hospices’ work.
Thank you @asda Hayes for sending us our special Christmas jar, it’s so sparkly 💚✨🎄👼🏽
A friendly reminder to ask for green tokens in store throughout December, the winning charity will receive a huge £1000 donation from Asda with the most tokens, ours is the blue box 🤩 pic.twitter.com/gf1pTnJ1nX
— Halo Foundation (@Halo_Children) December 3, 2019
Asda Foundation & local good causes
In celebration of the Asda Foundation‘s 30th birthday, the local charities, groups, schools and good causes nominated at all its larger stores will see their donation doubled. The charity receiving the most green tokens will receive £1,000 instead of £500, with the other two runners up receiving £500 each instead of £200. Over 1,500 local charities and causes across the country will benefit from the boost in funding this Christmas, thanks to a £1 million investment by the Asda Foundation.
Lidl Feed it Back
Lidl GB is set to donate a selection of festive food items as part of its regular food donations to local charities and community groups this Christmas, equating to over 250,000 meals. Lidl GB has redistributed over 1,800 tonnes of surplus food from its stores across Great Britain, which equates to over 4.3m meals donated to more than 1,500 good causes to date. Through its Feed It Back network, local organisations are kept up to date with the food that is available and can pick it up from Lidl as and when they need it, to use in whatever way they need to. Community projects interested in teaming up with a Lidl store can visit www.Neighbourly.com/FeedItBack or email li**@ne*********.com, to find out more about how to register.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.