While everyone else reviews last year’s business, we’re looking back over what we think really matters – the people. What a great bunch we have here at Adam! 2016 saw us at our most selfless and over the course of the year we did no less than 6 events for some very worthy charities.
We’re very proud of our team here and how they have generated a whopping £13,380 in total in 2016 for Royal Manchester Childrens’ Hospital, Forever Manchester, The Murray Parish Trust, Save The Children and The Mustard Tree. From bake-offs to marathons, this years’ fundraising has been driven by the passion of our teammates.
Here’s an overview of the year:
The Uganda Marathon
This life-changing personal achievement for our Director Leon Milns raised around £6000 for an array of worthy causes. They volunteered their time to helping charities, partied with the locals and even fed monkeys by hand. Participating in The Murray Parish Trust’s biggest fundraising event to date has proven to be the catalyst for big things for Leon – check out his https://www.weareadam.com/blog/the-uganda-marathon-part-two/ to find out why.
Big Charity Drive
So in case you weren’t aware, the idea behind this is to drive a cheap car (no more than £1000) across Europe to Manchester’s sister town, Chemnitz. No prizes for guessing which famous motoring show inspired this event! We weren’t the only ones involved; two other cars attempted the drive and everyone raised money by getting sponsors who were then plastered all over the cars. Our Business Development Director, Gareth Oakley took the wheel alongside Barry Lowe, Owner of San-IT. It certainly wasn’t plain sailing for Team Adam, with breakdowns (twice) delayed trains and re-routed flights but they eventually made it back home in one piece!
Our biggest team fundraising event of the year, we raised a total of £5065 – another massive thanks to all our sponsors for making it all worthwhile!
Caketober
We’ve been involved in the massive month-long bake sale for several years, raising money for Forever Manchester. As 2016 marked our 10th Birthday we decided to throw a kids-themed birthday party dressed as Heroes & Princesses; complete with party hats, balloons and bunting (obviously)! A great afternoon was had by everyone involved, including those of us that went out during the month to buy cakes from our friends’ bake sales. We had cake in the office pretty much every day throughout October – but no one minds their diet going out the window when it’s for a worthy cause. Maybe that’s how our team of runners kept going with their 5k runs?!
“5k a day? Easy!” Said no one. Ever.
Several members of the Adam Manchester team organised a month-long fundraising attempt for RMCH by running 5k every single day of the month. A gargantuan effort was made by all involved, many of whom were not previously runners and they raised a total of £2153 for their hard work.
At first it was fun, then it was toil, then it was painful and then it became one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. Really proud to have set this up, but a huge thank you to all the people who got involved and help reach the amount we have done. October 2016, is not a month I will forget quickly.
Christmas Jumper Day
We do a Christmas Jumper Day every year just because we’re all suckers for a cheesy piece of themed knitwear. This year though we joined in the National Christmas Jumper Day for Save the Children on Friday 16th December. Putting on a buffet we asked the team to wear their Christmas Day best and make a small donation in exchange for a very tasty lunch. It’s something we do quite often at Adam HQ but we filled up our bellies and topped up our total raised figure in the last few weeks’ of the year.
What do you think – Insta-worthy or ‘please don’t wear that again next year’?
Reverse Advent Calendar
Rather than stuff our faces with more chocolate than the kids at Charlie’s factory ever did, we chose to do a reverse advent calendar. Every day in December we opted to put an item into a Christmas sack for those who had more needs than we did. We dropped in tinned goods, bits of clothing, toiletries … any essentials we could think of and the team took the gifts across to The Mustard Tree on the last working day of 2016.
After we’d delivered our massive Christmas hamper, we split up and walked around the city centre buying hot drinks for the homeless before we headed to the warmth of our own homes for Christmas.
Another fabulously rewarding Christmas rounded off an incredible 2016.
We’re really proud of the entire team at Adam for their selfless acts of fundraising. Hopefully we’ve inspired you to get involved in whatever you can this year. Though 2016 may have had it’s low points we’ve definitely made sure that for all of us here at Adam, there have been some exceptional highlights too.
Now to top it all in 2017!