Mission Christmas 21 blog - Launch week
The last seven days have felt like minutes as we draw to a close the end of week one of Mission Christmas. Here's your weekly round up of stories to see what life is like behind the scenes of the UK's biggest toy appeal.
Fundraisers
At the time of writing, a whopping 55 fundraising pages have been set up for Mission Christmas on our award winning Giving is Easy website. Many people are setting them up to host collections across their workplace but if you want a challenge you can take part in a Christmas Bungee Jump! You can make your own page here and we'll be in touch with everyone next week with a fundraising pack and lots of social media assets and posters to help promote your fundraising.
Party like it's 1989!
If you love going out and making memories then you'll love this one!
Our friends at Dirty Stop Out events have organised a fabulous 'Back to the Roxy' reunion party at the O2 Academy, home of the legendary nightclub Roxy's! A huge tribute to 80's music and another room with 90's classics provides a fabulous opportunity to have a long awaited works night out. You can get your tickets here before they sell out and they are making a donation to Mission Christmas for every one sold. Hope to see you all there on December 10th.
Drop off points
Last week we introduced you to some of our Mission Christmas sponsors; Vicar Lane and iDeal Flooring in Chesterfield, Paradise Island Adventure Golf at Sheffield's Centretainment and Alhambra Shopping Centre in Barnsley.
Here's a few more, the full list is on our interactive map on our website. Thank you all so much for your support.
Direct Cars
The team at Direct Cars supported us last year and have a huge car show room and site over near Halfway Park and Ride just by Crystal Peaks Shopping Centre. They are even putting up one of our banners on their perimeter fence so those travelling on the Supertram each day will have timely reminders about getting involved.
Polar Windows
Our friends at Polar Windows answered our call for more support as we establish ourselves in North Derbyshire. They have two showrooms in Chesterfield and are well worth a visit if you have home improvements on the agenda!
Sheffield Wednesday Football Club
Staff, players and fans of Sheffield Wednesday love Mission Christmas and support us every year. Players come and visit HQ, use their club shop as a drop off point and donate goody bags and tickets. This year, they've gone a step further and are using this weeks match against MK Dons on Tuesday night as a pop up drop off point, displaying our boxes all around the stadium so over 20,000 fans have the opportunity to donate at the game and hopefully bring some luck and three points for their charge up the League One table. The event on Tuesday also coincides with their Christmas Lights Switch on event. Visit their website for more details.
Amazon
This week we saw the launch of our integrated Amazon Wishlist into our Giving is Easy platform. I posted a video on Linked In and it's had over 1,000 views. Amazon are the biggest company in the world and I've never seen anyone selling Amazon products not from Amazon's website. It's absolutely fantastic and groundbreaking for Mission. I have a bunch of super talented colleagues that head up Cash for Kids digital strategy and we are miles above when it comes to this sort of thing. Months and months of work has gone in to this especially in an era of pandemic with a lot of people still nervous or hesitant at going to shops they can donate a toy(s) of their choice and they get sent direct to our HQ. Giving is Easy also won an award and I'm sure with our constant development there will be many more to come! Congratulations to our Digital Director Darren Fowler and his team for making our lives that little bit easier with their problem solving skills. The link to the Wishlist is on our Mission Christmas website.
Co-Op
As our team are still a person down until 6th December it's impossible to leave Mission HQ with all the deliveries we're getting and ensuring our volunteers are being looked after, but our friends at various Co-Op branches have been busy the last six months and their staff and customers have raised over £10,000 to support our work. So I spent my Saturday visiting them to say thanks, it's so important to say thanks for everyone's efforts, it means the world to us. Thank you to all the staff that have been driving it and to your many customers. The hero image on the blog link and the two images below are the teams I met over the weekend. What a great company to work for that gives so much back to its local communities.
Volunteers
We have around 400 volunteers helping out at HQ this year. The team from Atkinsons & Irwin Mitchell helped get the first gifts bagged up and ready for Santa. Team Atkinsons pictured below. Thank you to everyone who gives up their time and respective businesses who promote employee volunteering.
McLaren
We saw friends at McLaren at the Barnsley and Rotherham Chamber of Commerce Celebration of Business event at Magna last week. We invited them to come and see HQ and they turned up in this brand new £375,000 monster they'd just picked up from Woking for an event at their factory at the AMRC so it was nice for our brand new van to have a high profile vehicle visitor so we had to get a photo. The McLaren team are collecting toys and volunteering at our HQ this year.
DJB Recycling
The fabulous team at DJB support Mission each year by collecting all our rubbish - there's lots when we handle up to 100,000 toys and gifts. They delivered two skips at the start of the week which is a huge help as we keep order in the warehouse. Here's Molly getting stuck in and helping keep Mission HQ clean and tidy!
And finally...
I end our week one blog with a thank you to Daniel Tupling, who has been working hard all year organising a football tournament in memory of Stuart Di-tanna who sadly passed away at 32 years young. The funds raised from the day long tournament and accompanying evening do in Rotherham are supporting Mission Christmas and it was touch and go if the event would go ahead this year with all the pandemic restrictions. A write up will be on Hallam FM's news pages this week. Thank you Dan for all your time and dedication to not only helping Cash for Kids but providing an inspiring tribute and legacy to honour Stuart.
See you next week
The phone lines are busy and emails are non-stop but we are slowly catching up and Monday we start getting our first gifts out of Mission HQ as they begin their journey to Santa.
Thanks for reading, daily videos are on my Linked In (search Allan Ogle) and I'll be back next week with more stories and inspiration.
Look after yourselves and those around you and thank you for everything you are doing to help Mission Christmas.
Allan & Molly
cashforkids@hallamfm.co.uk | 0114 2091100