Jo Humphreys-Davies, Walker Books
Jo Humphreys-Davies is the Trade Marketing Manager at Walker Books. Walker Books has been working with the National Literacy Trust for many years, recently raising an incredible £30,000 in one year for us to celebrate the company’s 30th birthday. Jo has been heading up the fundraising committee and in this interview tells us how they set about achieving their target and why the company is passionate about supporting literacy.
What is the nature of the National Literacy Trust’s relationship with Walker Books?
We’ve been working with the National Literacy Trust for many years now. Largely we have been involved with the National Young Readers’ Programme, helping to organise authors and illustrators going into schools, as well as working with the team on book selections and book donations.
Walker Books became very heavily involved with the 2008 National Year of Reading and Anthony Horowitz, bestselling author of the Alex Rider series published by Walker Books, became a major spokesperson for the National Year. During 2008, he went on tour, visiting young offenders, children in care, and those children who may not readily have access to books.
This year we chose to offer our support to the National Literacy Trust to celebrate our 30th anniversary. We wanted to mark it as a year of giving so we pledged to raise £30,000 for the National Literacy Trust. As part of our 30th year initiative, we also wanted to give back to the community and your mission to change lives through literacy was a perfect fit, the very heart of what Walker Books stands for. Our passion is to get our books into the hands of children.
And we’ve done it! It’s a wonderful Christmas present for us all and I’d like to thank everyone at Walker for being so determined to achieve this goal and congratulate everyone on a fantastic year of Fundraising. It’s a wonderful way to have celebrated 30 years of Walker Books.
How did you plan to raise £30,000 and how have you achieved this?
We started with the National Literacy Trust’s fundraising team coming in to the office to share tips with us about things that had and hadn’t worked. They suggested we try and spread our ideas across the whole year to give us an ongoing focus.
So that’s what we did – we planned a series of fundraising events over the year ahead. Some were big and some were small, some involved the whole company, some didn’t. We encouraged the company as a whole to contribute ideas and get involved. You just have to think really creatively and be open to suggestions and seize every chance because you can’t rely on the money just coming from within your company. You have to think of ways that you might be able to raise money amongst friends and family or with other corporations and businesses.
Which of the activities have been the most successful?
The most successful and the most fun (and I would heartily recommend this to everybody) was the Where’s Wally? Dash around Greenwich Park, London, that we did in the summer. It was officially known as the Superheroes Dash but we asked if Wally could be classed as a superhero. There were 25 of us dressed up as Wally - and two dogs - and we raised over £7,000. People from all over the company joined us, along with friends and family to cheer us on.
People were amazingly generous in sponsoring us and it really enabled the company to come together, all in all a very successful mission.
The Wally Dash probably brought in the most money, but we were also very lucky to have a relationship with Barclays Bank and we did a very big charity book sale at Barclays HQ in Canary Wharf. They were incredibly generous, not only with their time, but they also matched the money that we raised. The event was a huge success. We raised over £3,000 in cash, with an additional donation of £3,000 from Barclays on top of that. They also paid for the remaining stock which will be donated to local schools. Our grand total was £7,560!
What other fundraising events have you held?
Lots of individuals have done their own things: we’ve had two people run half marathons. We’ve held several sales internally at Walker. For example, we brought in new and nearly new clothes to sell. We thought we would raise about £200, but we ended up raising well over £600. It was incredible.
As well as clothing sales, we have held regular book sales in house. Other publishers have been very generous in donating books. This has made a huge difference and we are very grateful.
We’ve also sold licensing and merchandise goods. Several of our major book characters have huge licensing programmes and we have a range of samples and donated products from our licensing partners, everything from Maisy to Guess How Much I Love You.
How did you support the individual fundraisers?
We tried to keep the company motivated, involved and informed of our progress to help encourage fundraisers. Sometimes it would be as simple as showing them how to set up a justgiving page or letting them know it was fine to ask colleagues to sponsor them. I think some people felt a little bit shy at first, that there may be a bit of charity fatigue, but people are amazingly generous when they know that you’re taking time out to train and go and run a half marathon. People really get behind you.
What have been the benefits to the business as a whole?
Raising the money has really helped with staff motivation and team building. When working on a fundraising project, you are working across all of the different departments in the building and spending time with people that you wouldn’t usually spend time with within the company, as part of your day to day job.
Getting people together for a joint mission that isn’t to do with work was really valuable. People have got a real buzz out of it and have felt that they are really contributing and doing some good for the National Literacy Trust, as well as sharing our passion for books with people.
We’ve always believed strongly in the National Literacy Trust. At the beginning of the fundraising campaign, we invited Director Jonathan Douglas to come in. He gave a brilliant speech. When he said one in six people have difficulty with literacy, you could have heard a pin drop… People just had no idea and setting out the facts behind what we were doing from the start, really helped motivate people and garner support.
Is there any advice you’d give to anybody if they were going to embark on a similar mission?
My top tips would be:
1. Invite a charity spokesperson in to talk about why the charity is so important. It’s a real eye opener for some members of the company. Nearly everybody attended our meeting.
2. Try and form a committee so that it isn’t just one or two people doing it, but a whole group. That way you can really brainstorm fundraising ideas.
3. Think little: it might just be a cake sale or sweepstake. We have a lending library where it’s 50p to borrow a book, DVD or CD. Staff have brought these in, having enjoyed them and wanting to share them with someone else.
4. Then try to think of some big events, like our Wally Dash or our book sales.
5. It doesn’t have to cost you a penny! We’ve never actually paid out any money for any of our events. There’s been no expenditure. You just have to think creatively.
