Every year we hold a bake sale at DriveWorks HQ. In previous years we have raised money for charities such as Macmillan Cancer Support, Cancer Research UK and the Alzheimer’s Society. Our annual bake sale took place on Friday and this year, we are fundraising for a very different cause, suggested by Jake from the DriveWorks team.
Here at DriveWorks, the opinions of every single member of the team really matters to us. One of the ways we gather opinions is through our suggestion box.
Previous ideas that have been implemented from the suggestion box are:
- Providing a weekly fruit box for the team.
- Getting a coffee machine for the office (we now have two!).
- Having more clocks at different time zones around the office.
- Notepads and pens next to each phone.
- Headset stands for our desks.
Back in May Jake put a suggestion in the box for a defibrillator to be installed on site. Our office is on a converted farm with 17 offices, a few houses, horse stables and NGS gardens that are opened up to the public. The site is also surrounded by lots of public walkways, some houses, a few pubs and a school. A public access defibrillator would be there to protect all of these places and our wider community. We all agreed this was a great idea so we began some research.
We found that an outdoor public access defibrillator, a small machine which can shock a person’s heart into restarting, costs around £2000.
Research shows if you give a person CPR they have a 3% chance of making a full recovery, whereas if a defibrillator is used in the vital first few minutes, patients have a 60-70% per cent chance of making a full recovery.
As there are currently no public access defibrillators nearby, we want to provide a lifesaving device for our community so we are challenging ourselves to raise the £2000 over the next 12 months.
Our first fundraising event, the bake sale, took place on Friday. The DriveWorks team arrived on Friday morning with boxes and boxes of homemade cakes. We set up a marquee outside and decorated it with bunting and balloons.
The DriveWorks team were more than willing to help a great cause by eating lots of cake! We were also joined by friends and family of the DriveWorks team and our neighbours from the houses nearby and the other offices on site, including some of the guys from Dreamscape who made a very generous contribution to the fund.
Later in the afternoon some residents from Cheshire Grange, a local care home specialising in Dementia care, came along too. Even in the rain the DriveWorks team showed the visitors around the gardens. Howard and Wendy Platt then kindly provided their greenhouse to offer shelter from the rain so they could enjoy some tea and cake.
Despite the rain (in August, typical British summer!) we raised £449.51, doubled by DriveWorks to £899.02 and then topped up by Jake to a grand total of £900!
A huge thank you to everyone who contributed to the bake sale by donating raffle prizes, cakes and money, we couldn’t have raised so much without you all.
With £1100 to raise over the next 12 months, we’ll be raising money in lots of other ways too. Keep an eye out on our blog for more of our fundraising activities.
If you have any ideas for how we can raise more money to reach our target, please get in touch!
