Jess Maton

24 December 2018

Redgate giving something back – 2018 highlights

Giving something back is an important part of Redgate. We even have our own Give Something Back team who coordinate Redgate’s charity activities.

We especially like to support and donate to local charities, but we also support international charities, run fundraising events in the office, match fund Redgate employees raising money themselves, and everyone at Redgate gets one paid day each year to spend doing charity work of their choice.

We supported many charities over the last year, but here’s a snapshot of our 2018 highlights:

Code4Africa

We supported 17-year-old Michael Tennant, who flew out to Zimbabwe to run his own project to inspire, teach, and equip children in the field of programming.

“Thank you so much, Redgate, for the donation of £530 worth of equipment! This was an essential contribution to the trip, and enabled the teaching to take place. Without you, I would not have had enough kits to teach the kids and I would have been in a VERY sticky situation. I cannot thank you enough for saving the trip!”  Michael

Rocket Fund Project at Exning Primary School

We donated money towards equipment for a project to get Raspberry Pi and BBC Micro-bits into the school to help children get into coding.

Cambridge Online

This fantastic local charity helps disabled and disadvantaged people get online and learn basic computer skills. Our team met with them and agreed to donate towards much needed equipment.

DKMS Stem Cell donor registration day

We set up a donor recruitment event in the office for DKMS. This charity matches potential stem cell donors with people diagnosed with blood cancer. Over 50 Redgaters registered to be donors, which is an incredible number, and almost guarantees us to save someone’s life with blood cancer.

Macmillan Coffee Morning

We held a Coffee Morning, with a bake sale and raffle, in support of Macmillan Cancer Support. In just one day we raised a whopping £1124.

Papworth Trust

We ran a week of charity activities around the office to raise money for Papworth Trust, a local charity supporting disabled people. The money we raised will go towards a new accessible minibus.

Charity Christmas Craft Market

For an afternoon the office was transformed into a Santa’s Grotto and Christmas Craft Market, where creative Redgaters sold their own crafts. At least 15% of stall holder’s proceeds and 100% of the bake sale proceeds went to Cambridge Foodbank.

Mental Health Awareness Week

We ran activities throughout the week to raise awareness about mental health, and donated proceeds to Mind, a mental health charity. Activities included mindfulness sessions and massages, ideas boards for reducing stress, mental health advice books, daily blog posts, and a raffle.

Match Funding

Redgate match funds employees who do their own charity fundraising.

This year we’ve match funded employees doing a charity 5K run in support of The Stroke Association, a charity bake sale in support of LGBT+ charity The Kite Trust, fundraising for Just4Children, and fundraising for St Ives Youth Theatre.

Employee charity days

Redgaters can spend one paid day per year doing their choice of charitable work. Some of the charity days in 2018 have included:

• A group of Redgaters helped Romsey Mill, a charity supporting disadvantaged children and young families, sort out donations at their charity shop – and had a great time doing it!
• In the Pasadena office, Redgaters used their charity day at a dog foundation that focuses on the rescue, rehabilitation and re-homing of dogs. They spent their time training and walking dogs, cleaning and providing support to the staff.

This is just a small snapshot of how we give something back at Redgate. It’s a big part of who we are, and we want to encourage a ‘give something back’ attitude among everyone who works here – and have some fun doing it too.

We’re excited to see what 2019 has in store!

To find out more about working at Redgate and our company values, check out our careers page.