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Company Fundraising Ideas: The Julia's House £50 Challenge
Fundraising is a challenge, whichever way you look at it. People are focusing on the day job, so planning and implementing successful fundraising ideas will usually require additional time and effort outside of work. As part of our CUBExcellent initiative, the month of May was all about giving something back! After all, doing good makes you feel good. We chose to take part in the Julia’s House £50 Challenge. We had a blast supporting this charity during CUBEMAS and wanted to see how we could push ourselves to raise as much money as we could. Here’s what we got up to!
4 min read
Culture
The Big Idea Phase!
We held a little brainstorm session to come up with as many different kinds of ideas as we could think of. After checking that they’d be logistically possible to undertake (always something to consider!) we shared the ideas with the team and asked them to volunteer themselves to either take ownership of or partake in the ones they were most keen on.
We picked the top 5 ideas and ran with them!
Did someone say Summer Hamper?
Who doesn’t love a good raffle? To kick-start the £50 challenge, we filled a hamper with goodies such as Pimms, sweets, face-masks and more. All team members participated, and we sold over 70 tickets at £1 each. The lucky winner was our developer Adam, and he’s been coming into the office with flawless skin ever since.
CUBE's Come Lunch with Me:
We discovered some of our team are keen chefs with mad kitchen skills in our ‘Come Dine With Me’ style challenge! Each day for a week, some very generous people took it in turns to show off their culinary creations by bringing in portions of home-cooked food and selling it to their colleagues for £2-£3.50 (an absolute bargain!) with every penny going into the charity pot. Android Dev Nikos gave us a taste of Greece with his stuffed peppers and incredible homemade tzatziki!
The Great CUBE Bake Off
We love a good Bake-off, which is why we decided to give our keen bakers an opportunity to create their CUBE-themed showstoppers! Think PINK, think APPS and think WATERMELONS! To keep the pricing simple, we allowed people to ‘judge’ ALL the cakey-creations and cast their vote for a minimum donation of just £1. The grand winner? Kelly, with her HAZARDous chilli chocolate cakes!
The World Cup Sweepstake:
A World Cup sweepstake is a cracking fundraiser (the only downside is the 4-year wait in between…) With teams selected totally at random (which still didn’t stop the grumbling!), there were cash prizes on offer for the quickest red card, most goals conceded and most yellow cards. Dev Adam (the guy with the great skin) built a custom-made website for the tournament and charged £5 for entry into the sweepstake. £50 was raised for Julia’s House – thank you Adam!
Wax on... Wax off:
We’ve saved our most popular and successful fundraising idea for last. A very brave individual, Frontend Developer Mr Kevin Borrill, decided to bravely offer his body for a mega waxing session! With prices varying from £2 to wax a foot to £30 for an armpit, people were clubbing together to pay for the areas and literally throwing money at him in exchange for wax strips. Kev – you’re a hero!
Julia's House: A cause that stands out from the crowd:
Julia’s House is a Children’s Hospice in Dorset and Wiltshire dedicated to helping out families whose children live with life-threatening or life-limiting conditions.
We had the chance to visit their hospice in Dorset and saw first hand what a difference the charity makes to these children and their families. The facilities were outstanding and catered for a number of different medical needs and requirements.
But what stood out the most to us was the dedication of Julia’s House staff; their passion is truly inspiring and seeing their willingness to get involved and do what they could is something that changed the way we see the charity and their cause.
The Awards Ceremony:
During the fantastic £50 Challenge Awards Ceremony we met all the other businesses and companies around Dorset that got involved in the challenge. From fun-runs to sponsored lunches, together we raised and contributed over £12,000 for Julia’s House! We were also super excited to receive the Team award!
Want to help support the cause?
Check out Julia’s House ‘Donate’ page for ways to make donations, as well as a bunch of fundraising ideas and volunteering opportunities!
Published on July 2, 2018, last updated on November 19, 2020
