Sponsored Charity
Cascade support St Gemmas Hospice as their chosen charity.
Cascade decided to adopt a charity each year and incorporate fundraising in to team building activities and nights out for the staff. As we have a number of charities who are customers, we decided to adopt one of them for 2009 and chose St Gemma’s Hospice in Leeds.
Elizabeth Baxter the Corporate Fundraising Manager from St Gemma’s came out to meet us and provide ideas and information on fund raising activities we could take part in or set up ourselves.
The support of local companies is extremely important to St Gemma’s as corporate income has grown to over £400,000 per year and companies like Cascade support them in many different ways.
Charity begins at work
Cascade has selected and purchased it's Christmas cards from St Gemma’s catalogue and also made a donation to use St Gemma’s details in our email Christmas card sent to our customers last year. We have also supported the Charity’s Christmas Draw by purchasing raffle tickets and staff gave up lunch breaks to help pack bags at Christmas in M & S which begs the question "How many Project Managers does it take to pack some shopping?". The answer is 3 by the way. One to analyse the packing requirements, one to write the project plan and one to tell other people to do all the work!
Cascade also donated some large pieces of art work for St Gemma's exhibition in October and sent in 20 bags of ‘nearly new’ items (all of great quality and of course good taste, being belongings of Cascade employees!) and have an on-going collection for the Charity’s shop including stamps, toner cartridges etc.
Four of the Client Services Team did the 12 mile Midnight Walk on 16th May in 3 hours 15 minutes although they moved somewhat more quickly when they did a pub crawl (I know, its a hard life) around Pudsey where we are based in support of St Gemma’s.
There is no rule that says you cant enjoy yourself whilst raising funds for charity and that definately applies to the success we have had selling homemade cakes. Certain departments have made major contributions in this respect but will go nameless.
Six of our staff are doing the Great North Run in Newcastle on 20th September but it isnt , unfortunately, the same people who contributed so enthusiastically to the cake collection!
Cascade continue to raise funds as well as donating various articles and our time to St Gemma’s, many of our staff have been involved in the fundraising which they found both rewarding and fun.
