January 2008

Help the Aged is the Winner

Sandstone Limited is pleased to announce that Help the Aged is the lucky recipient of its annual charity draw, this year worth £500.  In common with many organisations, Sandstone used to give small presents to client contacts at Christmas.  In 2001, this changed.  Alan Hunt, Managing Director, explains:  "We decided to give the money to charity instead, but since it was money that would otherwise have been spent on our clients, we felt that they were the best people to decide where it went."  Sandstone invited every client contact to nominate a charity and every nomination went into a hat as many times as it was nominated.  That first year, the beneficiary was a specialist cancer unit at Wrexham Maelor Hospital.  Since then, other charities to have benefited are Bird (Brain Injury Rehabilitation & Development), Breast Cancer Care, Cancer Research UK, Ty Olwen (a palliative care service in Swansea) and Martin House (a hospice for children and young people in Wetherby).  Now these have been joined by Help the Aged. 

Specialists in team building, conferences, away days and corporate events, Sandstone also supports a variety of charitable causes through special client events during the year. An approach much appreciated by our clients whose positive response encourages us to go bigger and better year after year!

Sandstone expands its family

Sandstone Limited, specialists in team building, conferences, away days and corporate events, is a family run business.  And it is delighted to announce that its family has just been added to - with a beautiful little girl.  Jo Howarth (one of our Event Managers) and her husband Trev are now the proud parents of Francesca Anne, who weighed in at 7lb 14oz on the 8th January.  Both mother and baby are doing well. 

We're sure it won't be too long before Francesca is able to help out at events - she might be a little young to attend a Romanbar session but we think she'll look real cute dressed as a cowgirl in the Wild West!

HSBC chooses to help NSPCC

HSBC is the latest client of Sandstone Limited's flagship team building activity, Cube, to choose to partner with Sandstone and support a charity as a way of rewarding its people's trust.  Cube is a collaborative activity that includes a task requiring the participants to hand over their own money with no explanation or prospect of it being returned.  In recognition of such trust, they do get the money back - and the total amount that they collect is given to a charity of the client's choosing with Sandstone and the client sharing the amount to pay between them. 

Although the activity is collaborative, people are organised into teams to participate in Cube and HSBC decided to let the team that contributed the most throughout the activity to choose the charity to benefit.  They chose NSPCC and a cheque will be winging their way shortly.  Nikki Hunt, Event Manager, commented:  "Most Cube clients are good enough to join with us and support a charity through Cube, but HSBC is the first to allow the participants to directly choose the charity themselves.  It was a great idea and was extremely well received by the whole group.  Indeed, it was so well received, the majority of the 80 strong group chose to give it's own money back to us and add it to the two company donations!  We're delighted!".  And so, we are sure, will be the NSPCC.  In total, they will benefit to the tune of £260.64.  Other charities to have benefited in this way recently include Cancer Research, the Children's Trust (Tadworth), the Kids Company, Marie Curie Cancer Care, the MS Society and the Terrence Higgins Trust.