Major employer's gem of a charity campaign

Multi-national insurance broker and major Ipswich employer Willis has raised more than £5,000 for St Elizabeth Hospice.

Since January this year all Associates at the Willis office in Friars Street, Ipswich, were encouraged to donate high quality items they no longer needed and bring them into work as part of the firm’s new Hidden Gems campaign. These “hidden gems” were then sold at the St Elizabeth Hospice Shop in Dog’s Head Street, Ipswich, to raise funds for the charity.

Each item on sale was labelled with a Willis Hidden Gems tag to show that it had kindly been donated by a Willis Associate.

The idea was to run the campaign for just a week but it was so popular that staff donations have been rolling in for the last five months.

The campaign raised £4,500 and the firm also held a staff dress-down day which netted £753.68 for the Hospice.

Associates have just visited the Hospice, in Foxhall Road, Ipswich, to hand over a cheque for the total of £5,254 to the Hospice’s retail sales manager Fiona Browning.

Vicki Chapman, Executive Assistant to the CEO at Willis, said: “We are delighted that our original idea for the Hidden Gems campaign has been so successful. This generated lots of interest from Willis employees and wider family members. The Hidden Gems display created by the team was very impressive. This together with the regular feedback on sales of the donations helped keep everyone at Willis motivated to seek out donations long beyond the Hidden Gems campaign week in late January."

Fiona Browning said: “Willis came up with a brilliant idea to help stock the Hospice’s shop and it has captured the imagination of their staff. We have been able to sell some lovely items and the Hidden Gems campaign has raised an amazing amount of money which will help the Hospice continue to provide services to its patients and their relatives free of charge.”

St Elizabeth Hospice, based in Foxhall Road, Ipswich, is a charity which costs £6.6 million a year to run and relies on the generosity of businesses, individuals and community groups to help raise funds to improve the quality of life for patients in East Suffolk who have an illness from which they will not recover.