Working with suppliers to add value to our community

For me the community my family’s business serves is very important and we endeavour to do the things that will benefit the people that live around us. Apart from my family and retailing I have a passion for sport and football in particular. The recent Singh’s Charity Cup proved to be a way of achieving many of my passions in one go.

The event was my idea, but it was Roxy Levick, our Kraft Food’s Sales Development Executive who made the event happen. She was the key organiser of the event and masterminded the plan and much of this was done in her own time.

The initial idea was for a 90 minute match between just 2 teams, but to maximise the number of people who would be interested in attending this was changed. The event was broadened to a knockout tournament between four teams and four 40 minute matches. As these matches were between a Singh’s team, one from Booker and two from Cadburys’ community interest was enhanced by inviting four junior teams from the Sheffield area to put on four exhibition seven aside games. My sons played in two of the junior games.
A key task for Roxy was to persuade Sheffield United Football Club to host the event. She was successful in her negotiation with managing director David McCarthy and got a lot of support from his team.

She went on to organise the teams from the trade and inviting the junior teams as well as the trophy for the winners and certificates and ‘medals’ for the children.

Of course the key purpose of the event was to raise money for Macmillan, the cancer support charity. For that Roxy contacted Rob Turner, the charity’s fundraising manager for Sheffield and Chesterfield. He was able to provide four volunteers to attend as well as arranging for Sheffield’s amazing Macmillan fundraiser John Burkhill to attend the day. He was the fantastic person who inspired the event. He liaised with Roxy and helped by promoting the day through the Macmillan network, merchandise, buckets and collection items.

Roxy also organised several of the regional Kraft Foods sales development team to man the raffle, tombola, bucket collection and other fundraising stalls. In all Kraft Foods provided more than 30 people for the event. Roxy used her great negotiating ability to line up some fantastic prizes donated by Booker, Singh’s and Cadbury’s.

Of course she liaised with me all the way through and my key task was to organise the publicity including getting the event into the Sheffield Star. The newspaper was great and published an article before the day and a report about the event afterwards. The Singh’s Charity Cup event was very successful with over 1,000 people coming to Bramhall Lane for a great community day. Over £4,000 has been raised for Macmillan and donations can still be made by visiting www.justgiving.com/Singhs-KraftFoods.

I personally must add here a big thank you to Roxy Levick for making the Singh’s Charity Cup such a huge success.

The next event we are sponsoring is the Grenochase which is a 3 mile road race in the Grenoside district of Sheffield that has been run most years since the early 1950’s. This year we have become the main sponsor and Unilever, who we have a great partnership with through Partners for Growth, are helping us provide the refreshments for the competitors.

Our calendar of community events doesn’t stop with sport. We are holding a Big Coffee Morning in aid of Macmillan in September. We recently had a fantastic party for the Queens Jubilee as the photograph show.

Yes our community is key to our success and we have a wonderful time delivering value and benefit to the people we live amongst. What are you doing and how do you add value to your community?