Who’s supporting who this Christmas – a festive partnership round up
Melanie May | 16 December 2022 | News
Only a week to go before most of us down tools for the Christmas and New Year break. Here’s a round up of some of support charities across the country are receiving across the festive period, and from who.
Conifox Adventure Park & Kids Love Clothes
Edinburgh’s Conifox Adventure Park is appealing to families to spread the festive joy to those who need a helping hand making children’s Christmas dreams come true this year. The business has once again partnered with Lothian-based charity Kids Love Clothes, which has seen soaring demand for its annual Christmas gift bags. Conifox is donating 200 toys through its own Christmas Toy Appeal and is urging its visitors to share in the spirit of Christmas by boosting the effort further with the gift of a new toy for children aged between 0 and 12. Visitors can drop their new toys off to the Big Toy Box at Conifox’s Activity Centre. Donations made must be in their original packaging and no bigger than the average board game. Kids Love Clothes will package the toys and each recipient will receive a gift bag containing age-appropriate toys for Christmas.
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Minicabit & NHS Charities Together
Cab comparison site minicabit is launching its ‘Fares that Care’ campaign to support the wellbeing of NHS staff, patients and communities this winter. minicabit will donate £1 to NHS Charities Together for every cab trip booked now on its website, app and partner channels completed by 31 January. This campaign is not the first time minicabit has supported the NHS. During the pandemic minicabit raised over £250,000 to fund free cab trips for NHS staff UK wide to reach the frontline when public transport was restricted. Recently, with co-funding from Innovate UK, it launched a comprehensive online cab booking system for NHS teams across different sites that also enables them to track their savings on cab spend and carbon footprints.
Aldi Ireland & Barnardo’s Ireland
Aldi Ireland has donated over 300 gift cards to the value of €33.3k to its charity partner Barnardo’s Ireland, supporting over 300 vulnerable children & families in Ireland this Christmas. The retailer has also announced that it has reached its €1million fundraising goal for the charity and committed to raising a further €1million.
Metro Bank & local charities
This year the Metro Bank Christmas Community Campaign will support 76 local charities – from foodbanks and homeless shelters, to children’s charities and hospices. All donations, including toys, care packages and money will go directly to the charity, in order to “spread warmth” this winter. Each store got to pick their charity of choice, which included Age UK Buckinghamshire, Trussell Trust, RDA, Rockinghorse and Bradford Central Foodbank. Recent research from Metro Bank has revealed that 23 million adults in the UK are concerned with how they’re going to pay for Christmas this year, with worries including paying heating/energy bills (44%), the cost of buying presents (31%) and the price of Christmas dinner (21%).
Bensons for Beds & Crisis
Bensons for Beds is helping Crisis support people experiencing homelessness this Christmas. It will be providing support for Stand with Crisis through colleague fundraising and volunteering and by making donations from the sale of its Simply by Bensons mattresses with £5 from every one sold going to the charity. Colleagues across the business will also be raising money for Crisis and will wear red on 19 December to show their support. Bensons will give colleagues a paid day to volunteer at one of the Crisis Skylight centres up and down the country and at its London hotels – where voluntary work includes helping in the kitchens, packing hampers, making deliveries and making seasonal telephone calls to Crisis members.
CitySprint & Crisis
CitySprint has partnered with Crisis for the 12th year running. Throughout their 12-year partnership, CitySprint has provided Crisis with over 100 vans. This Christmas, in addition to the four vehicles they provide year-round, CitySprint will also supply eight vans across the UK to help people move into safe accommodation, as well as to support retail shops and Crisis at Christmas hotels and day centres with delivering food and supplies for guests over Christmas. As well as their ongoing logistics support, CitySprint donates £12,000 per year to Crisis on behalf of their customers in place of a Christmas gift.
Warwickshire couple fundraise for Cancer Research UK with Santa messages
A couple from Warwickshire are spreading the Christmas magic this winter, whilst raising funds for Cancer Research UK. To combat being apart from family and friends during Christmas 2020 due to the lockdowns, Neil and Amy Brunton decided to spread some Christmas cheer by creating and sending personalised video messages from Santa. In July 2021, Neil was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer, and has since undergone several surgeries and treatments. Forced to isolate again over Christmas 2021 whilst he underwent chemotherapy, and following a huge response from their Santa videos the year before, they decided to offer these to the wider family and friends. This year, Neil and Amy are creating bespoke videos for children across the nation for a donation to charity. People have been able to email sa**************@ou*****.com to request a videofor a minimum £5 donation with all proceeds going to Cancer Research UK. Over £5,000 has been raised so far.
Good Morning Britain & Home-Start UK
Good Morning Britain is supporting Home-Start UK on its 1 Million Minutes campaign, which runs throughout December to help those who are experiencing loneliness. The campaign is asking viewers to support eight charities looking for volunteers to connect and make people feel less alone. Viewers will be able to pledge their time – from a one-off 60-minute opportunity to longer volunteering opportunities. Alongside GMB presenters, familiar faces across ITV, celebrities and influencers will also get involved and show their support both on air and online.
Lidl Northern Ireland & NSPCC Northern Ireland
Shoppers dashed through the aisles of their local Lidl Northern Ireland store taking on the retailer’s annual Trolley Dash on Saturday 10 December to bag their entire Christmas shop for free – while also raising funds for Lidl Northern Ireland’s charity partner, NSPCC. Now in its eighth year, the Trolley Dash raised more than £90,000 for the charity.
Higgins Partnerships & 3Food4U
Higgins Partnerships is supporting local charity 3Food4U this Christmas, by collecting toys and gifts for children aged 0-12 years old. Father Christmas will then distribute them to local families in need.
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.