This one’s for all you facilities managers, office managers, food service companies, caterers and anyone in charge of leasing commercial coffee machines for offices. There can’t be many among you who haven’t heard of the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning – you’ve probably helped organise one at your workplace before. Either way, this is a reminder that this year the event is celebrated on Friday 27th September. Get it in your calendar and start planning today. Your office coffee machine is the ticket to successful fundraising, so now’s the time to check it’s working at peak performance and make sure you’ve got enough coffee supplies and supplementary ingredients to make this your best event yet.
For anyone not in the know, the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning is a fundraising day for Macmillan Cancer Support. Macmillan offers physical, emotional and financial support to families living with cancer. Last year, the charity raised almost £27 million for this incredibly important resource.
Of course, a fundraising coffee morning can be as simple as instant coffee and biscuits among a few friends – and lots of the funds are raised exactly that way. But Britain’s workplaces are the ideal place to host a coffee morning. You’ll have an eager audience, huge fundraising potential, an extra credential to add to your CSR/corporate responsibility report, a free PR opportunity and the chance to improve communication and shared goals among the people who work in your business. All too often, companies are split into silos of knowledge and departments; events like these bring people who might otherwise never interact together. And that’s the key to better collaboration and continuous improvement: familiarity, empathy and communication. Then there’s the feel-good factor for staff of knowing they’ve done something that will change lives for the better.
So, what do you need to do?
- First, get sign-off from the people in charge! Point out the benefits if you’re meeting resistance. It’s not free time off work, it’s an opportunity to connect.
- Second, choose your date and time (it doesn’t actually have to be the 27th September, if that doesn’t work for what’s going on in your business).
- Third, get your coffee morning kit, by signing up as a host.
- Fourth, decide what you want to include in your coffee morning – donations for a raffle, home-baked cake competition, an array of coffees and other hot beverages brewed by your office coffee machine (of course!) … the event is what you make it. You’ll find lots of ideas, plus recipes, on the official website. In fact, there’s even a handy downloadable workplace coffee morning checklist to help you plan it efficiently.
- Fifth, access all the other useful resources on the site, including email signatures for awareness, invites you can edit, posters and bunting, publicity top tips, brain teaser challenges and much more.
- Sixth, get those invites out and make sure all heads of department are on board.
- Seventh, stock up on all the supplies you need to guarantee great coffee keeps flowing throughout the event, and schedule a thorough coffee machine cleaning for the day before!
That’s it – let us know how you get on and happy fundraising!