It’s the time of year when many businesses and charities take part in some festive fundraising for those in need. This year, dbfb decided to take part in sponsoring the Myton Hospice Christmas sleigh collection, that travels around Warwick multiple evenings each December and collects funding from door-to-door knocking, as well as giving children a glimpse of Father Christmas on his sleigh!

Myton Hospice provide end of life care across Coventry, Warwick, and Rugby. They ensure that life is enhanced when cure is no longer an option, and provide comfort to those who are sick, from diagnosis to end of life. 95% of their funding comes from money that is donated, so the importance of having sponsors for events such as this is instrumental in making a difference to the hospice and ensuring they can provide the services they do.

The dbfb team decided to get hands on with our sponsorship and attend one of the evenings where we walked around with the Myton Hospice team as well as some other sponsors and collected money door to door. Despite the chilly evening it was heart-warming and very festive! Being able to speak directly with the hospice, we truly realised the change that donations and sponsors such as our makes the lives of people who are in the care of Myton Hospice.

From the area we covered alone, we managed to raise an amazing total of £1346.89! This will make a huge difference to Myton Hospice and ensure they can carry on providing the amazing care and support that they do.

We will continue to help Myton Hospice wherever we can, and we are already in talks of sponsoring the sleigh for next year’s festive season as well!

At dbfb, we’ve had an exciting new start to our marketing and brand design! Up until now, our small (but mighty!) marketing team have been creating our own brand content without an agency, but up until recently it started to become clear that we needed some more hands with our marketing material! We began the search for an agency that we could team up with for our wide range of materials, from video to artwork.

We’ve had a long-standing relationship with All Things Business at dbfb, and since their recent merge with Rocket creative agency to form GIANT, we knew that they would be the perfect match for us. They are a creative and agile team who pride themselves on understanding the needs of clients and turning projects around swiftly.

dbfb and GIANT are passionate about supporting local business and we both believe strongly in working with the communities in the surround areas and the different businesses within them.

Our Head of Marketing, Emma Mullings, says “It wasn’t a hard decision to make when it came to choosing GIANT as our agency. They have a creative and agile team, who work and think in the same way we do at dbfb. On top of all this, they are right on our doorstep, which is what we also aim for when choosing our partnerships.”

9^th May 2022 marks the start of Mental Health Awareness week in the UK. Each year there is a theme, to give people an important topic to talk about. This year’s theme is Loneliness.

Loneliness is becoming one of the primary factors contributing to mental health problems across the UK, affecting millions. With the pandemic isolating us from family, friends, and work life, it’s been hard to adjust to and now things are opening back up, it can be daunting to get yourself back out there.

Here at dbfb, we understand that mental health is just as important as physical health, which is why we take the time to reflect on how we can make our workplace somewhere people can talk, and how we can help each other to tackle issues like loneliness. There are many things we can do to give each other a safe space at work, to be open about mental health and know that loneliness is mostly a feeling and not a reality. Being able to talk about mental health problems at work or at home can help to tackle the stigma surrounding mental health and sharing thoughts and feelings can help prevent the feeling of loneliness. 

“People should feel they can say ‘I am struggling mentally’ just as easily as they would say ‘I have a cold’, without judgement or negativity.  Our emotional state effects how we make decisions and interact with others. Therefore, having an open and supportive culture is mutually beneficial in the workplace, and should go a long way to reducing stigmas around mental health issues and make those suffering feel less alone.”

Jess Ansell, Head of HR at dbfb

Below is a list of resources if you need to speak to a professional, as no one should feel that they have no where to turn.

Samaritans

If something is upsetting you and you need to talk to someone, you can contact Samaritans 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You can call 116 123 (free from any phone)

Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM). 

You can call the CALM on 0800 58 58 58 (5pm–midnight every day)

The Mix

If you’re under 25, you can call The Mix on 0808 808 4994 (3pm–midnight every day)

Switchboard

If you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community, you can call Switchboard on 0300 330 0630 (10am–10pm every day)

We believe in giving back to the community and supporting important causes that make a difference. Pink Wednesday has been a bit of fun at dbfb for a while, but we decided to make it an official fundraiser.

Launched by Shannon Parris, a member of our Delight team, the Customer Service arm of the business (and lover of all-things-pink), this is now our official internal company fundraiser! A different charity is selected at the start of each month using a fly wheel. These range from local causes to world aid and are all handpicked by our different teams at dbfb, so they are all charities close to our heart.

As well as kindly donating, every Wednesday our dbfb team wear either their favourite pink clothes, or one of our new snazzy pink dbfb t-shirts. Following the iconic Mean Girls quote, “On Wednesdays we wear pink!”.

It is a great way for everyone at dbfb to give back to causes that matter and with each month that goes by, we are more determined to meet the target goals we set ourselves on our Just Giving pages. Last month we raised £495 for the British Red Cross Ukraine Crisis Appeal, and we can’t wait to carry this on for the charities in the future.

Plus, while the aim of the fundraiser is raise money for charities, it’s also a great way to have fun in the office and brighten everyone up by wearing pink.

The charities include; Harry’s Rainbow, Deafconnect, Tiny Changes, Cransley Hospice, Northamptonshire Mind, Cynthia Spencer Hospice, Team Vericco War Child, Bowel Cancer UK, Leicester Animal Aid and Macmillan.

We’re encouraging other local businesses on the initiative. Simply launch the fundraiser in your company and tag #PinkWednesdays on your social channels to take part.

“I absolutely love pink, and for a few years had already been encouraging the team to wear pink on Wednesdays for a bit fun. After speaking with the business, we decided that it would be great to take it to the next level and launch an official fundraiser. This was not only to bring bit of excitement to the team, but also to raise money for local charities.”
Shannon Parris, Customer Experience Executive.