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Business and Communities Executives update

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Business and Communities Executives update

Luke Selibas , Azim Salam and Sian Dhillon are St Basils Business and Communities Executives who travel out to meet with businesses, organisations, groups and schools interested in preventing youth homelessness. 

Here’s their round-up of what’s been happening recently and some examples of the amazing support we have received.

Please click on any blue highlighted links for further articles or information.

Businesses

DLA Piper staff and clients at fundraiserWe’ve had some amazing financial donations this year from supporters who have taken it upon themselves to fundraise for us through a variety of activities.
Edgbaston Golf Club recently presented us with a cheque for a staggering £40K following a two year partnership as their chosen charity. This amazing amount was achieved through a number of different events with their generous members including raffles, golfing events and three sponsored Walks!
Gymshark have also been taking on fitness challenges to fundraise for St Basils. Earlier in the year Gymshark staff completed the 3 peaks challenge, scaling the UK’s 3 highest peaks in less than 24 hours. They described it as the toughest challenge they’d ever done, “way harder than tough mudder or the marathon.” Through this Gymshark managed to raise a fantastic amount totalling over £17K!
DLA Piper hosted another treasure hunt to raise funds for us recently. DLA Piper’s staff and clients took part, submitting teams of 5 at a cost of a £100 donation each. The treasure hunt utilised an app similar to the Pokemon Go app where participants had to travel to a set location in the city centre, this would then open up a digital treasure chest with questions to answer which would score points. All in all a very innovative, fun and successful fundraising event!
Another hard-working group of people are M&S Longbridge employees who as their spokesperson Karen said, are passionate about homelessness and therefore have undertaken a few different fundraisers to support this, raising a fantastic £4,109.38 for St Basils!
Huge thanks to Immediate Media Co as well who have made St Basils their charity partners for the year and who chose to support St Basils at their all staff summer festival, raising over 3.5K with a tombola!
Long-time supporters of ours KPMG also offered to fund a refurbishment of the kitchen at Yardley House which provides emergency accommodation, and fundraised by holding a Quiz to attain the amount needed which is brilliant support!
Whilst Kalamazoo IT announced back in the summer that St Basils are their new chosen charity for 2019-20 and have already started fundraising with individual staff selflessly asking for donations instead of birthday presents as well as signing up for St Basils fundraising events.Gymshark hold up St Basils banner

We’ve had some excellent assistance from another business partner as well, Dapa Interiors, who have donated thousand’s of pounds worth of high-end designer goods this year including high-end lamps and a designer sofa. The designer sofa was donated to one of our supported accommodation schemes and really helped transform the space, making it a much nice place for young residents to get together in the evenings. Dapa have given us permission to sell the designer lamps to the general public via our NEW ebay shop: https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/stbasilscharity

We’d also like to thank all the local restaurants who are supporting Streetsmart currently including, Adams, Butlers Arms, Harvey Nichols Birmingham and Simpsons. More on that soon!

St Basils have also enjoyed amazing support not just on fundraising but through mentoring our young people as well, as part of charity of the Young People enjoying their designer sofayear partnerships, from Gallaghers Insurance and specialist recruitment company Boden Resource.

Finally a special thank you from Sian Dhillon to Neil Liddell of Sandler Training  for all the mentoring and support he has given Sian and whose advice and training has helped restructure our Corporate fundraising strategy, on which we have seen greater returns as a result.

Educational establishments

Last spring Birmingham City University fashion students again supported St Basils by organising a range of exciting events to raise funds. In total between them they raised a staggering 15K for St Basils!
Oundle school also took part in their annual sponsored Sleepout for St Basils. This event usually raises in excess of 10K for St Basils, due to the massive generosity of the friends and family of those taking part.
The University of Birmingham’s Valefest also supported St Basils as well as a few other local charities, raising several thousand pounds for St Basils.

Groups

West Midlands Fire Service’s Band who have made us their charity partner for the year hosted a well-attended heroes and villains concert to raise funds for us back in the summer. A lot of people dressed up as their favourite super hero or super villain and it was a really fun evening with the band playing lots of well-known theme tunes from films and TV shows. They held another concert for us in October and they’re planning to join in with some of our fundraising events soon.

Once again just some examples of the amazing support we are so lucky to receive from our local communities. On behalf of St Basils young people, thank you so much for your support!

Don’t worry if you weren’t mentioned in this quarterly report. Look out for the next one! Or email us!


As you may be aware every year St Basils fundraising team is tasked with raising a set amount of unallocated funds so that St Basils can continue running at its current level, providing services to over 5000 vulnerable young people per year. We are currently short of £5 per night for each young person staying in our supported accommodation schemes and therefore we are dependant on the generosity of our local communities in order to continue our vital work.

If your business, organisation, school or group want to partner with or fundraise for St Basils please contact Sian (Birmingham businesses and business partners), Azim (Birmingham and Worcestershire groups and Educational establishments) or Luke (Solihull, Coventry and Warwickshire), via fundraising@stbasils.org.uk or by calling 0121 772 9619. Thank you!