In 2020, just before the world went into chaos, staff at Oliver & Co Solicitors nominated Claire House Children’s Hospice as their charity of the year.
As the country was locked down, the opportunities for fundraising were limited, however we rallied the troops and came up with a few novel ways to bring in money for Claire House with our 10 for £10 Challenge and our weekly Zoom exercise class. These were great ideas and we had a lot of fun doing them but we didn’t feel that it was enough and we weren’t able to fully support our chosen charity.
Two years of fundraising
Given we weren’t able to put our all into our year supporting Claire House, we decided to keep them as our Charity of the Year for a further year and we kicked off our efforts with a 12 month challenge – to walk, jog or run at least one mile every day for a year. 20 of our fabulous employees were able to complete the challenge and nearly £3,000 was raised from donations from Oliver & Co along with sponsorship for participants.
Let’s get quizzical
Not content with physical challenges, we wanted to test the brains of Oliver & Co and guests and so organized Quizakaya, a quiz and raffle in aid of Claire House at Izakaya in Chester. The evening was a great success raising £1,220.
Butterfly Bake
In addition to our above fundraising, we have raffled off spaces in our car park, donated residual client balances on files (in accordance with the SRA rules) and even had donations from staff in lieu of birthday presents.
For our final fundraising event of the year we took part in Claire House’s Butterfly Bake and had a week-long cake sale. The bakers amongst us didn’t disappoint and we had a constant supply of tasty cakes and biscuits to buy. We raised a further £80 to add to our total.
Grand Total
We have been extremely proud of our efforts over the past year. It has been a tough time for many companies and particularly charities and we feel very fortunate to have been able to support Claire House. In total, including gift aid, we have raised over £10,000.
It costs £8,278 to run Claire House for just one day! Only a very small amount of the charity’s income comes from the NHS and grants and so they are reliant on fundraising. We are very pleased to have been able to donate enough money to cover a full day of Claire House’s costs.
New Charity of the Year
We have thoroughly enjoyed working with Claire House over the last two years and would like to thank them for being so welcoming, allowing us to visit one of their sites, taking part in events and encouraging us with our challenges.
Unfortunately, the time has now come to nominate a new Charity of the Year. For 2022/23, Oliver & Co’s fundraising efforts will be focused on The Clatterbridge Cancer Charity, a dedicated charity for cancer patients and research across Cheshire and Merseyside. We are looking forward to working with the charity and taking part in some new fundraising events.
