10 corporate partnerships supporting UK good causes
Melanie May | 15 September 2020 | News
Center Parcs celebrates raising £1m for Together for Short Lives, Whitbread’s Premier Inn staff raise £100,000 for GOSH Charity during lockdown, and PHA Group chooses its first ever Charity of the Year – plus more corporate fundraising and partnership news.
Center Parcs & Together for Short Lives
Center Parcs UK has raised more than £1m for Together for Short Lives. The seven-figure sum is the largest amount Center Parcs has ever raised for a charity partner. Center Parcs began supporting Together for Short Lives in 2016 and raises funds through donations from guests, match funding, employee fundraising and challenges. The partnership was initially due to come to an end in 2021 but, in light of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the third sector, Center Parcs has now pledged to support the charity until at least 2022.
Main image also Center Parcs.
We’re delighted to announce that @macmillancancer has been chosen as our new charity of the year! Over the year we'll hold a series of fundraising events, including virtual quizzes and sponsored runs, in an effort to raise £30,000 for the charity. https://t.co/CzxwOzjhO6 pic.twitter.com/SsPEjPCIi7
Advertisement
— Aldermore Bank (@AldermoreBank) August 25, 2020
Aldermore Bank & Macmillan
Aldermore Bank has chosen Macmillan Cancer Support as its ‘Charity of the Year’ until next summer. Macmillan Cancer Support was elected following a bank-wide employee vote from a list of shortlisted charities. Throughout the year, colleagues at Aldermore will hold a series of planned fundraising events in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support, from virtual quizzes to sponsored runs, in an effort to raise £30,000 for the charity. The bank will also match the amount employees raise at events via its ‘pound for pound’ scheme.
CityBlock & Eggcup
Lancaster-based property developer and student accommodation operator CityBlock is providing a temporary home for the city’s food distribution charity Eggcup. The rent-free agreement will see Eggcup move into the former Co-op building on Chapel Street as its sole occupiers. The temporary lease will enable Eggcup to operate a central hub as a replacement for its Covid-19 emergency doorstep delivery service. The new hub will also complement Eggcup’s food club warehouse which needs to grow in scale partly as a result of demand following the coronavirus pandemic.
Kidderminster Harriers FC & The Kaleidoscope Plus Group
Kidderminster Harriers FC has announced that national mental health and wellbeing charity, The Kaleidoscope Plus Group, has been appointed as the 2020/2021 First Team shirt sponsor. Kidderminster Harriers FC also appointed Monica Shafaq who is CEO of the Kaleidoscope Plus Group, as Lead Non-Executive Director for equality, diversity and wellbeing, back in January 2020.
PHA Group & Solace Women’s Aid
The PHA Group has announced Solace Women’s Aid as its first Charity of the Year. The new partnership is running from early September for a 12-month period, during which PHA and its employees will offer support through a series of fundraising and volunteering initiatives. The year-long series of activations will kick off with PHA’s ‘STEPtember’ campaign, in which the agency’s staff will raise money for Solace by trying to achieve a collective step count of over 10 million steps during the month of September. The new ‘Charity of the Year’ programme has been developed as part of The PHA Group’s wider ‘People and Culture’ strategy, introduced this year to help maintain company culture.
Westfield Health & British Transplant Games
Westfield Health has renewed its support for the British Transplant Games, the annual event that celebrates organ donation. It has now backed the games for 12 years, and as the Games moves to Leeds for 2021, Health has committed to support the event for the next three years. The Westfield Health British Transplant Games is the flagship event organised on behalf of the charity Transplant Sport. The 2021 games will take place in venues across Leeds from 5-8 August and see transplant athletes from the age of three to over 80 compete in their thousands.
Whitbread & GOSH Charity
Premier Inn owner Whitbread has announced that its teams have raised £100,000 for GOSH Charity during lockdown. The money raised is part of Whitbread’s longstanding relationship with GOSH Charity, and part of its Force For Good commitment to give back to the communities in which it operates. Team members raised money at home or during caretaking duties at shut sites. One idea came from Louise Casey (pictured), a team member in Warrington. She took to the hotel corridors to raise £1000 by running an indoor marathon.
Barclays & Teens Unite
Cancer charity Teens Unite is one of 100 UK charities to be awarded a £100k donation from Barclays. Charities were invited to apply for one of 100 donations of £100,000. Barclays launched its 100×100 UK COVID-19 Community Relief Programme to support COVID-19 relief work in local communities. The programme, which forms part of their wider COVID-19 Community Aid Package, focuses on supporting UK charity partners who are meeting the immediate needs of people in our communities, including low income families, those facing financial hardship, isolated elderly people and key workers.
Nights on Us & NHS ICU nurses
Over 3,000 NHS ICU nurses have secured themselves a free two-night stay in a luxury hotel, through Nights On Us. Nights On Us offers the complimentary stays to ICU nurses to thank them for their work during the coronavirus pandemic, and has revealed that all 6,200 rooms it had secured from 55 of the UK’s best hotel brands, such as The Savoy, Shangri-La Hotel, At The Shard, London, MAMA Shelter, London and The Resident, were snapped up in under six hours from the 10am launch on 9 September.
Principality Building Society & Welsh charities
Principality Building Society has donated its unused maintenance vehicles to support the services of two charities and a community project in south Wales. The charities benefitting from the donation are Welsh-based homelessness charities Llamau and The Wallich, and community-based project Free Bikes 4 Kids. The vehicles will be used by Llamau and The Wallich to support their mobile outreach services, which include delivering hot food and providing accommodation support to people experiencing homelessness and rough sleeping in Wales.
Principality image: HUW JOHN, Cardiff 09/09/2020 www.huwjohn.com
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.