Technical support, IT expertise and customer service might be our ‘bread and butter’ at Q2Q’s Lancaster HQ, but we do find time to do our bit for charity too! This year, we’re taking part in the ‘20Twenty Corporate Challenge’ for a local hospice.
We’ve been long-time supporters of St John’s Hospice, and first heard of this B2B challenge last year when our boss, Lorna Stellakis, and technical support engineer, Phil Irwin, attended a Lancaster Chamber of Commerce event hosted by the hospice itself.
The contest is a wonderful opportunity to help care for people living in our community who are living with a life-shortening illness. The premise involves being given £40 ‘seed’ money from the charity, and then being as creative as we possibly can in order to grow that starter fund.
In the run up to this year’s event, Phil found himself bumping into Chris Pilkington on several occasions and soon signed up to the challenge – and to become Q2Q’s ‘face’ of the competition too. Knowing the team’s love for food, it didn’t take long to establish our modus operandi…
We have from January until April to fundraise, and we’ve kicked things off with ‘Hungry Tummy Friday’ – which involves Phil feeding the Q2Q team.
Phil Irwin explained: “I like to cook, so during the four-month challenge I’ll be aiming to make a lunch or breakfast dish once per week, which will then be sold to my colleagues – including office favourites such as Philadelphia bagels! We haven’t set a hard-and-fast target, but it would be nice to at least double the seed money.”
The Q2Q team are getting their hands dirty too, with helpdesk supervisor Amy Riley taking charge of the baked goods, all of the team will be contributing random snacks to the office snack drawer and selling those, and we’re going to raffle off some of the corporate Christmas gifts we received in December.
You can follow our fundraising activities via our Instagram page.
About St John’s Hospice: The organisation offers free palliative care to patients with life-shortening conditions. The team has been caring for our community every minute of every day since 1986, and services cover a population area of 250,000 people in North Lancashire, South Lakes and parts of North Yorkshire.
