For the past few years, we’ve nominated various charities to be our charity of the year. For 2021, we are proud to be working with Filling in the Blanks. Filling in the Blanks is a fantastic organisation based in Norwalk, Connecticut which provides food bags to thousands of children who suffer from food insecurity.
For these children, weekends, summers and snow days are scary times as they may not know where their next meal is coming from – and the COVID pandemic has only escalated these fears. Filling in the Blanks delivers food bags to schools before the weekend as well as during summer break (including summer camps) to ensure that children have nutritious meals even when they’re not at school.
Since its founding in 2013, the organisation has gone from strength to strength, growing from a small operation in the founders’ homes to occupying a warehouse with 5000 square foot of space with volunteers who store and process the food bags that go to schools today.
We have lots of fundraising ideas for the next few months, including:
- A Virtual Food Drive.
- This is an ongoing effort in which we can either purchase a selection of food items Filling in the Blanks needs or donate cash directly.
- A Virtual 5K – April 25th to April 30th.
- Traditionally, the 5K event would have been organised so everyone ran the same route, but to be COVID-safe, this year we can run, walk, or cycle anywhere. This should be a fantastic opportunity for both our UK and US teams to take part and raise funds.
- Golf outing – May 18th.
- A sponsored round of golf around the prestigious GlenArbor Golf Club in New York.
- Various opportunities to volunteer.
- We know that our team members in the US office are very keen to get hands on with Filling in the Blanks’ work and make up some food bags.
- Holiday Backpack Drive.
- Over the holidays, Filling in the Blanks provides sturdy backpacks to every child who receives their food bags. They also fill these backpacks with holiday-appropriate food (like pancake mix), an age-appropriate book and toy, hats, gloves, socks, and a dental kit. This is another opportunity for us be directly involved by volunteering our time to help fill the backpacks.
- Kindness Note.
- These are handwritten notes that are added to the Weekend Meals Bags – a personal note of encouragement that can make a big difference to the children receiving them.
We also have some seasonal events planned for Halloween and Christmas. Keep an eye on our social media channels for announcements regarding these.
If you want to find out more about the work of this brilliant charity, please visit their website.
A few months ago, we announced our support for Magic Breakfast, a fantastic charity that provides nutritional breakfasts to thousands of children across the UK. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted just how essential their work is, as they have continued to provide relief to struggling families in these difficult times. Over 24,000 children received Magic Breakfast food during the COVID-19 school closures; during the 2020 summer holidays, they helped to feed 35,000 children.
The pandemic put a halt to the majority of our fundraising plans for this year. In spite of this, we’ve still been supporting Magic Breakfast through the events we could do while we worked remotely.
One of our ongoing efforts is a ‘Book Swap’ campaign. We’re avid readers at Crick Software (as you might expect from a literacy company), and this is a good way to share some of our favourites with one another. For every book we borrow, we add a donation to the pot. Fingers crossed that by the end of the year, we will be significantly more well read and have a nice sum to go to Magic Breakfast.
For Halloween this year, we held a company-wide pumpkin carving competition. Members of our team from the UK and US flexed their creativity and produced some amazing pumpkins while contributing to charity. The winner this year was Charlotte with her fantastic Clicker-inspired carving, but everyone who participated did an incredible job. You can view the entire gallery on our Facebook page.
On the 11th of December we’ll be celebrating ‘Christmas jumper day’ by wearing the most festive and most terrible articles of clothing. Look out for that on our social media channels.
If you would like to find out more about the amazing work Magic Breakfast are doing, you can do so by visiting their website https://www.magicbreakfast.com/.
Last year we announced that we were successful in attaining the Investors in the Environment Bronze accreditation. For our continued commitment to sustainability over the past year, we have been awarded with the Silver award.
The Investors in the Environment noted several areas where we had made significant improvements from the previous year. This included a reduction in our electricity usage of 30%, of our gas usage and waste paper by 17% and 16% respectively, as well as a huge reduction in our waste production of 74% thanks in part to the recycling efforts that we implemented last year.
Going forwards, the iiE highlighted a few things that we can do to improve even further, including wider staff engagement and moving to a renewable energy tariff. We also intend to actively monitor our staff travel, as we know that this is a big part of our carbon footprint, and investigate ways to reduce it.
We’re very proud that all our staff members took an active role in contributing to this exceptional result and are aiming to achieve the ‘Green’ accreditation next year.
