We were incredibly excited to talk with Beckie Braham, Global Giving Back Business Partner for The Access Group! A huge thank you to everyone at The Access Group, it’s been an amazing year as their charity partner.
Could you tell us a bit about The Access Group?
Access is one of the largest UK-headquartered providers of business management software to small and mid-sized organisations in the UK, Ireland, USA and Asia Pacific. It helps more than 100,000 customers across commercial and non-profit sectors become more productive and efficient and employs approximately 6,800 people worldwide.
Giving Back is at the heart of what we do at Access, every year our staff nominate causes they’d like to support and a staff vote decides which charity partners we fundraise for globally through a calendar of events. Access then matches every pound raised, and the charities receive an additional grant from our Foundation.
We have a global network of champions who support and promote our strong Giving Back culture at Access, allowing everyone in the business to feel connected to our purpose. This year, we’ve had 10 charity partnerships and Magic Breakfast was our nominated UK charity of the year.
Why did The Access Group choose Magic Breakfast as your Charity of the Year?
We had a significant number of employees nominating children and young people as the causes they were most passionate about, one of the key themes that came up in the nominations was child poverty. We also liked that with Magic Breakfast the donation impact was very clear, 28p per breakfast which makes it easy for people to quantify the impact with every donation or fundraising event. It really feels like we can make a difference.
Many families in the UK have their financial struggles compounded with the cost-of-living crisis; so this also played a huge factor in winning the employee vote. No child should have to go hungry as it impacts their learning, growth and development.
How have you found the partnership over the last year?
Our employees have been incredibly engaged with Magic Breakfast, both fundraising and volunteering. Our fundraising kicked off last year with a world-record attempt in powerlifting in partnership with Loughborough University. Our Access team did the challenge hungry, with no breakfast to further highlight the cause.
Throughout the year we’ve seen a wide range of fundraising events including a charity ball, photo competition, a 5-day trek and a sponsored abseil led by our CEO Chris Bayne from the roof of our headquarters in Loughborough.
We’ve also seen first-hand the amazing work Magic Breakfast do. We had a number of volunteering events with Magic Breakfast, the Aspiration Day saw our employees giving Year 6 students in a local Magic Breakfast partner school insight into our careers, and we also went to two local schools around the festive season to provide presents so breakfast club is even more enjoyable.
What are you most proud of, regarding the Charity of the Year partnership with Magic Breakfast?
We are incredibly proud of the amount of money raised for this amazing charity and our employees’ incredible passion for supporting this charity. We can’t wait to hear how the money we have donated has positively impacted on schoolchildren from disadvantaged communities in the UK.
