Fundraising Success at the DriveWorks Bake Sale 2022

Every year we hold a fundraising 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, as well as raising funds for an onsite defibrillator. Our annual bake sale took place on Wednesday 25th May this year and we were fundraising for another cause very close to home.

In the past we’ve also raised money for Bliss for Babies, a charity nominated by one of our team members who was supported by the charity when their baby was born 8 weeks premature and spent 6 weeks in neonatal intensive care and the special care baby unit.

Premature babies have a greater risk of brain injuries and following their time in the special care baby unit, further tests confirmed significant damage to the left side of the brain.

The formal diagnosis of this is a type of cerebral palsy called right-sided hemiplegia, which means that the muscles on that side of the body are tense, and can result in muscular weakness.

Now 3 years old, this has an impact on their independence and day to day life, however there are therapies and equipment that can massively improve functionality and quality of life.

All of these additional resources, equipment and therapies can be very expensive. As a team we decided to dedicate this year’s fundraising efforts to helping fund access to therapies and resources that can help their mobility and independence.

Before the bake sale, we had already hosted an Easter Raffle, a Eurovision sweepstake and a Grand National sweepstake to kick off the fundraising.

The date of this year’s bake sale fell just before the UK celebrated the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

The Platinum Jubilee marks 70 years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, our longest serving monarch. Most of the country celebrates such an occasion with festivities such as street parties, local festivals, concerts and various other events.

As double Queen’s Award winners, we proudly celebrated Her Majesty the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee by closing our offices in honour of the national celebrations.

We also made the Queen’s Jubilee the theme of our bake sale. We decorated with Union Jack flags, red, white and blue bunting, and balloons.

The DriveWorks team put so much effort into bringing a wide variety of baked treats. It revealed some secret bakers among the team with some seriously impressive baking skills!

We were lucky with some sunshine for the afternoon and we were joined by some of our neighbours at Laskey Lane, we are very thankful for their generous donations.

The DriveWorks team were more than willing to help a great cause by eating lots of cake……

We also had two classics games of ‘Guess how many sweets are in the jar’ and ‘Balance the 20p on the lemon’. Both were great fun, with Andy from the Technical Team and Elise from the Sales Team manging to balance the 20p for a long period of time. Wes from the Systems Team also showed absolute dedication to the game, so we thought he deserved a shout out too!

Conor from the Technical Team guessed only one away from the correct number of sweets in the jar, so went home with the sweet filled prize.

The bake sale raised £600.67, kindly matched by DriveWorks to make the  total a whopping £1,201.34!

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed to the bake sale by donating cakes and money, we couldn’t have raised so much without you all.

What Else Are The Team Doing?

Members of the DriveWorks team will be joining the Warrington Running Festival later this year.

Runners will be able to choose to enter a 5k, 10k or half marathon. Heather will be joining us for the run, travelling from her home office in Colorado, USA. With many of the DriveWorks team interested being keen runners we hope this will be a great way to raise more funds for a great cause.

To help train for the event, Laura from the Sales Team has organised bi-weekly 5k runs after work. This has been a great way to support each other in preparing for the running festival.

We have got lots of plans and ideas for fundraising and we look forward to sharing our progress throughout the year on our blog.