From fundraising fun days to football: 14 ways companies are helping good causes
Melanie May | 13 March 2020 | News
From Price Bailey’s fun day for Action Medical Research, to IPI’s employee mentoring with UK Youth, here is a round up of some of the ways businesses are supporting charities around the UK.
IPI & UK Youth
Reading-based digital contact centre specialist, IPI, has teamed up with UK Youth. IPI is undertaking a series of fundraising initiatives for the charity, while some of its employees are donating their time to mentor and coach young people participating in the charity’s programmes. IPI has raised £7,000 for the charity since October 2019, with more fundraising initiatives planned for 2020. The company has also hosted a charity auction, which alone raised £4,000 for UK Youth.
Manchester United, Cadbury, & Age UK
As part of the recently announced partnership with Mondelez, Cadbury and Manchester United have teamed up to promote Cadbury’s ‘donate your words’ campaign in support of Age UK. Eleven ‘Guests of Honour’ stood on the iconic Old Trafford pitch and shook hands with Manchester United’s first team ahead of their match against Watford. The Guests of Honour were all locals aged 61–87 and dedicated Manchester United fans who have benefitted from their local Age UK charity. The guests stepped out in front of a crowd of 75,000 fans, serving as a reminder of the issue of loneliness which affects hundreds of thousands of older people living within Britain’s communities, and aiming to inspire people to ‘donate your words’ by having a conversation with an older person.
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CASCAID & Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity
CASCAID has raised over £1.6million for Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity (GOSH Charity) as part of a year-and-a-half long partnership. The money raised will help to fund a new Cardiac Catheter Lab at GOSH, to enable less invasive ways to diagnose and treat children with heart conditions. The partnership has been led by CASCAID’s ambassadors, who have undertaken various fundraising challenges from marathon running and mountain climbing to bake sales, and a singathon. CASCAID’s partnership with GOSH Charity was initially due to run until June 2019, however engagement with fundraising was so successful that CASCAID extended the partnership until the end of 2019.
We're delighted to announce that our new #charity partnership with @ProstateUK starts today! #MenWeAreWithYou pic.twitter.com/owQxq1vhDl
— EDF 🇬🇧 (@edfenergy) January 6, 2020
EDF & Prostate Cancer UK
EDF has launched a new national charity partnership with Prostate Cancer UK. During a three-year partnership, EDF and its employees are aiming to raise over £100,000 each year by taking part in a series of creative, fun and engaging fundraising campaigns. Each of EDF’s regional branches will play a key part in meeting the fundraising target. Employees at EDF Doxford are focused on ensuring they organise a wide range of initiatives that help to not just raise money to help fight prostate cancer but also drive awareness of the disease among employees and their families who are most at risk of the disease.
https://twitter.com/ShulmansLLP/status/1224685016355086337
Shulmans & Leeds Mind
Leeds-based corporate law firm, Shulmans LLP has announced that it has raised more than £10,000 for Leeds Mind. Shulmans colleagues selected Leeds Mind as its charity of the year in 2019. During the year, the firm organised a series of fundraising initiatives, including a team taking part in the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge and a sky dive, alongside regular activities as part of Shulmans’ ongoing corporate social responsibility programme – with activities such as ‘The Great Shulmans Bake Off’, monthly dress down days and the annual boys vs girls netball match. The firm also supported national and regional awareness days, including Time to Talk Day and Multicoloured Monday.
https://twitter.com/WestLothianRDA/status/1227347767418290184
Aegon UK & 7 charity partners
Aegon UK raised more than £106,000 for charity in 2019, as Aegon UK employees working with their Atos colleagues raised £106,471 for good causes UK-wide. £92,268 of this was for the seven employee selected charity partners, including West Lothian RDA, Forever Manchester and SiMBA. The remaining £14,200 was raised for a range of other good causes through matched funding and personal fundraising. Three of the charities attended a presentation at Aegon’s Edinburgh Park HQ where they received a cheque for more than £25,000 from new CEO, Mike Holliday-Williams.
https://twitter.com/WebhelpUK/status/1223201780831416321
Webhelp & Dementia UK
Webhelp has announced Dementia UK as its corporate charity partner for 2020. This partnership was nominated, and chosen, by employees at Webhelp. The funds raised will go towards the charity’s Admiral Nurse Dementia Helpline. The new partnership follows on from the success of Webhelp’s corporate charity support of Together for Short Lives, which resulted in over £31,000 being raised for the charity. Webhelp will be supporting Dementia UK throughout the year and posting regular fundraising stories, led by its on-site Engagement Ambassadors at www.webhelp.com.
CR Windows & St Peter’s Hospice
CR Windows, a Bristol based window company, has managed to raise £1,110 for St Peter’s Hospice. At the end of 2019, the four-decade-old company pledged to donate £10 to the Hospice for every new order received in the month of January. St Peter’s Hospice, founded in 1978, is a cause close to the hearts of CR Windows’ employees, and was established the same year as the window company. Based in Kingswood, the window and door specialists has been supporting local causes for over 40 years, by donating money to causes including children’s sports clubs, The Grand Appeal and supporting TV projects such as DIY SOS, altogether donating more than £20,000 to local causes.
Price Bailey & Action Medical Research
Price Bailey has raised over £17,000 in a fundraising fun day (main image) in aid of Action Medical Research. With the challenge of raising as much money as possible in one day, staff took part in a range of fundraising activities that included quizzes, bake sales, collections in city centres, partners in the stocks and more. Many also decided to donate their pay for the day. The practice-wide charity day was the latest effort in a two-year fundraising campaign for Action Medical Research and specifically in support of its ‘Saving Tiny Lives’ campaign. The campaign is focused on generating funds in order to carry out research into reducing premature births.
Peninsula & Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital Charity
Manchester-based global employment law consultancy Peninsula has raised over £200,000 for Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital Charity. In March 2019, the consultancy announced a three-year charity partnership with the charity with the focus on Peninsula raising £1million for the iMRI Scanner Appeal. The Appeal aims to raise £5million overall to purchase a new intra-operative MRI (iMRI) scanning suite that will revolutionise brain surgery at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. Peninsula employees have already raised thousands through fundraising activities such as the Great Manchester Run, abseiling a 200ft building and a trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. Funds have also been raised through payroll deductions, which have been matched pound for pound in corporate donations.
Asda & FareShare South West
FareShare South West, based in Bristol, will have capacity to provide an additional 265,000 more meals to vulnerable and low-income people each year thanks to Asda funding the costs of a new van. The new van, along with a new, recently installed industrial chiller, will afford the charity extra capacity to recruit up to 31 new local charities and community groups in the next year. FareShare estimates the additional food it provides to frontline organisations could reach up to 3,317 more people at risk of hunger across the region.
Mobius Works & Empire Fighting Chance
2020 will see Mobius Works, the integrated services contractor, committing to 10 different charity challenges throughout the year, in a bid to raise £10,000 for Bristol youth charity, Empire Fighting Chance. The charity, which was visited by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle last year, was born on Bristol’s streets to tackle the impact of poverty on young lives.
Greene King & Macmillan
Greene King has now raised £7 million in 7 years for Macmillan Cancer Support, its national charity partner – £2 million of which was raised in the last year alone. Greene King team members have taken part in a diverse mix of challenges and events, ranging from the 400-mile Ultimate Brewery Bike Tour and Kilimanjaro treks to community-based events like family fun days and music festivals. ‘Macmillan May’, the company’s annual fundraising event, raised over £711,000 in 2019 alone. Individual team members have also taken on their own challenges, while small individual donations made at the point of purchase through Pennies, the digital charity box, have also added to the total raising more than £670,000 in its first year.
Ethical Superstore, Ella Daish & Changing Lives
Ethical Superstore has partnered with activist Ella Daish to launch an online ‘Eco Period Box’, collecting donations of plastic-free period products to help alleviate period poverty in an environmentally-friendly way. Daish started Eco Period Box so anyone can access plastic-free period products and the partnership takes the initiative online for the first time. When shopping with Ethical Superstore from 11 March to 21 April 2020, customers will have the option to donate a period product at the checkout, and for every 10 items donated Ethical Superstore will add two more. All items will be donated to Changing Lives for women and children who use its services in the North East, North West, Yorkshire and Midlands.
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.