We are thrilled to announce that we have hit our £25,000 fundraising target for Anthony Nolan three months early! It’s been a fantastic nine months of company events, physical challenges, mufti-days, eating, drinking and more- here’s how we did it:
We kicked off the initiative in February, and immediately hosted a company pub quiz and bingo night at Cattivo in Brixton. This bought in £835– a brilliant start and an encouraging sign of what was to come.
Fast-forward to April and six brave M&P colleagues took on Tough Mudder Finsbury Park. The team all ran the course in Anthony Nolan t-shirts, increasing brand awareness for the charity in north London, and raised £1,591 which took us to over 10% of our target.
In June, the Property Management teams were treated to their first Contractor-sponsored drinks, with Onsite taking them for a lively evening at Hammersmith’s The Queen’s Head. The teams would enjoy two more over the following months, with Arnold Inventories sponsoring a drinks in September and Remora Cleaning Ltd taking them for a final one in November. These three evenings bought in just shy of £1,000. Other notable initiatives from the past six months include multiple mufti-days and a still-ongoing Bonus Ball competition, where half of each week’s winnings go to Anthony Nolan. These efforts put £1,500 towards our goal. We were also treated to two barbecues held by our Lettings and Sales Directors in June and October respectively. Turns out our Directors are multi-talented: these were delicious and added another £839 to the total.
Next up was the Three Peaks Challenge in July. This well-known challenge involves aiming to climb the highest mountains in England, Scotland and Wales within 24 hours- not for the faint hearted! The M&P team of 13 completed Ben Nevis in five hours, before hopping on the bus to the Lake District. They began to scale Scafell Pike just as the sun was setting and carried on climbing until the early hours. Breakfast and a four-hour drive later and they were in Wales for the final push. Amazingly, the team finished Snowdon at around 11am, well within the 24-hour time limit. The statistics from this challenge are pretty impressive- 22,540 ft, 61 km, 73,790 steps, 6000 calories….and that’s before we’ve even got onto the money raised: £8,936, enough to add 220 potential stem cell donors to the register.
Before we knew it a major test for our highly competitive teams arrived in the shape of a rounders tournament. 14 groups from across the business battled their way through temperatures of 38.5 degrees to take home the coveted trophy, and Battersea and Balham eventually came out on top after some nerve wracking challenges from Chiswick and Brook Green. The day’s total came to £2,430- a figure rightly celebrated at our Summer Garden Party straight afterwards.
Only two weeks passed before the next major challenge, the Prudential RideLondon Surrey 100. Like the name suggests, this is a 100-mile cycle ride from Hackney out to Box Hill, and back through Oxshott and Putney to finish at The Mall. The three M&P competitors all finished in under 7 hours and 10 minutes- and raised a total of £1,981, adding a further 50 donors to Anthony Nolan’s register. A special shout out goes to our Bishop’s Park Lettings manager Chris Lilly. Having missed the sign-up deadline, he took it upon himself to set up an exercise bike on Parson’s Green and cycle the 100 miles solo! This brought in a fantastic individual fundraising effort of £1,218, which, added to John-Paul, Bartek and Laura’s totals, finished the event on £3,199.
In September, HR organised a company-wide raffle. They managed to source some amazing prizes including a Dyson Hairdryer kindly donated by the Dyson Foundation. Of course, no one could resist such an alluring prospect and tickets were frantically bought: £2,000 more for Anthony Nolan later, Natasha Edmonds from the Tooting team took home the star prize.
We were in for another treat in September, as our Client Services team hosted a pizza-laden charity screening of the England vs USA Rugby World Cup match. England’s win was made all the sweeter by the fact that the screening added approximately £400 to our total.
There’s another personal fundraising effort to mention now- Alex Lord, apparently not tired enough from the Three Peaks Challenge, decided to compete in Wales’ Hurly Burly SwimRun in September. On the day, the event was cancelled due to ‘extreme’ weather- absolutely no problem for Alex, who decided to create his own challenge: competing in the nearest parkrun before returning to Snowdon and swimming for two hours around and across a lake at its base. We can all agree that Alex’s bravery (madness) paid off, as he personally raised £1,030 for Anthony Nolan.
Everyone got a bit of breathing space before our final- and biggest- fundraising event of the year, the Run for a Life Relay. 31 teams ran a London-spanning 55-mile relay course between each of our offices. All the runners ran in Anthony Nolan T-shirts- we were incredibly proud to be showing off the charity’s name all over London- and did further fundraising by asking local businesses for support, raising as much awareness as possible on a local as well as a larger scale. The offices all tried to find the most creative way to pass the baton between them, and we all loved keeping up with the hilarious photographic evidence. Meanwhile at HQ we worked just as hard as the runners, eating our way through a barbeque ran by the Sales Directors and a Property Management-organised bake sale, and showing off our mufti-day outfits: all proceeds going to charity of course! Overall the team managed to complete the course in nine hours and 50 minutes and raised £2,680. This bought us within touching distance of our total- we had just three percent more to raise!
We hit our target thanks to an incredibly generous contribution from Remora Cleaning Ltd, who decided to make up the remaining £673 gap between us and the £25,000 mark. We couldn’t be more grateful for the boost to an early finish and are delighted that we’ve been able to add approximately 620 potential lifesavers to Anthony Nolan’s donor register!
Go Back