For some time now the team at Ballyhoo has been keen to give back to the community and find a local charity that we can support by raising awareness and through fundraising.
Acorns Children’s Hospice stood out to us immediately. At Acorns, life-limited and life-threatened children, young people and their families are given crucial support throughout illness and beyond, providing nursing, respite and end-of-life care.
Having personally known a family who have relied on this charity and visited the Selly Oak hospice, we were keen to establish a relationship between Ballyhoo and Acorns so that, in our small way, we can help them continue their good work.
About Acorns Children’s Hospice
Acorns Children’s Hospice Trust was established here in Birmingham in 1988, though its roots started in the early ’80s, to offer a network of care to children and families affected by debilitating and terminal illnesses across the heart of England. Acorns was chosen as the charity’s name due to the first hospice’s location on Oak Tree Lane in Selly Oak, South Birmingham. Diana, Princess of Wales, officially opened this first facility on December 14th, 1988.
Two further hospices followed in later years, based in Walsall and Worcester, in 1999 and 2005 respectively. Several charity shops are located throughout the West Midlands, providing a regular stream of income and raising awareness on the high street. The charity has benefitted from high-profile support over years too, with Aston Villa famously becoming the first premier league football club to have a charity as their main shirt sponsor, for free.
In Figures
- It costs £8.8 million every year to provide care services at Acorns.
- In 2014, Acorns supported over 760 children and more than 980 families.
- They have over 440 members of staff and over 2,000 volunteers.
- On average, 1 child a week in Acorns’ care will die.
How Ballyhoo is Supporting Acorns
Our first effort to fundraise for Acorns will be taking part in the annual Acorns Lantern Walk on October 3rd 2015. This is a 12 kilometre, lantern-lit, evening walk through Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham City Centre. 12k is approximately 7.5 miles and should take us around 2.5 hours to complete at a good walking speed.
Four members of the Ballyhoo team are able to attend, with the aim of raising at least £50 each.
How to Donate
To support Acorns and Ballyhoo please see our team page on JustGiving, any amount you’re able to donate is greatly appreciated!
Alternatively you can text BLLY99 followed by your chosen donation of either £1, £2, £5 or £10 to 70070 to donate instantly.
We’ll Also Donate £1 for Every Feefo Review We Receive!
In addition, one way we aim to regularly raise money is to donate £1 for every review we receive on our independent online feedback system, Feefo.
Every month, requests are sent out to our customers asking you to take two minutes to give both our customer service and the specific service you have received (for example, web design or online marketing) a rating of excellent, good, poor or bad. You can then optionally leave a comment too.
Feefo’s feedback facility helps us to learn more about how we’re performing and provides us with insights to improve Ballyhoo.
By donating £1 to Acorns for every review received we hope this will provide a little extra incentive for you to leave us some feedback and in the process we can help raise a bit more money for this fantastic charity.
