SERT's Christmas Charity Work
23.12.2021
Following our purpose and with a full Christmas spirit, the team supported the local Food Bank for the second year in a row and decided to take it one step further by extending our support to local charity shops. Next year we aim to inspire as many businesses as possible to jump onto our Secret Santa trend.
We donated to Meon Valley Food Bank, who again were extremely grateful. They told us that with the run up to Christmas, SERT’s donations would be rapidly put to good use as these are challenging times for many families. Having the ability to help those in need is the reason we chose to support a Food Bank.
In addition, Ben Knight, our Chief Operating Officer, created a very clever way for us to also support local Charity Shops. So, we organised for everyone to do something a little bit different for our Secret Santa this year.
Every year we would pick names out of a hat and set a limit of £10 for the gift. So, this year we decided to ask everyone to spend their £10 wisely – in a charity shop! This was a great success by not only making the gift buying experience different, fun and challenging, it also meant SERT were supporting the local charity shops. We had 28 people participate in the Secret Santa, therefore over the whole company, we contributed £280 to charities locally. Some of the team went over their budget, having not only purchased their Secret Santa gift from the Charity Shop to impress their recipient, but also some treats for themselves, with one person getting themselves a Christmas Jumper Dress, someone else a rain mac, someone else a bracelet, plus a cookbook, picture frames and canvas images!
Everyone enjoyed doing something a bit different, feeling pride that they have helped contribute to the wider community and we hope this trend is picked up by other companies, schools and establishments. From just one company we contributed a minimum of £280…
According to business statistics from FSB; In 2021, there were estimated to be 1.4 million UK private sector businesses that have employees. (Source HERE)
Let’s use this figure and imagine each business has a minimum of 10 employees… That’s 140 million distributed across UK charity shops… MINIMUM!
Please help share this blog and spread the good work we have been doing to inspire others to do the same.
Together, we can make a real difference.
Posted by: Alisha Godby
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