34 County Sport Partners recently supported a successful Badminton 4 Macmillan week jointly delivering 36 events, raising over £3,000 and engaging new participants.
Badminton England were delighted with the superb engagement and support from County Sports Partnerships through the workplace challenge programme.
The events successfully achieved their aim of reaching into a new audience, predominately female, whilst raising vital funds for Macmillan. Over half of participants involved in the events were female and just under half of all participants did not play Badminton regularly with a large proportion taking the opportunity of these events to return to the court, having played Badminton in the past. Work is now underway to ensure those returning to the sport continue to play.
Social media engagement has been unprecedented and reached new heights for any Badminton England campaign, in particular on Twitter using #raisearacket; Facebook adverts alone have reached 343,410 news feeds and have been shared 360 times, 40% above expectations
Sandy Kurek, Badminton 4 Macmillan Week Project Lead said
“We would like to take this opportunity to thank County Sport Partnerships for their support with regard to Badminton 4 Macmillan Week. Taking into consideration the short time frame for events to be planned and delivered, we were overwhelmed with the response. The feedback and data we have received back has been very positive, in particular for engaging new players. Thank you again”.
Macmillan also thanked all involved:
“Thank you everybody for supporting Macmillan Cancer Support. Your fundraising enables so much more to be done to help those affected by cancer, so whether you raised:
- £10 to cover the cost of 19 copies of our cancer guide
- £27 could pay for a Macmillan nurse for an hour, helping people living with cancer and their families receive essential medical, practical and emotional support.
- £175 for a Macmillan grant to help someone with heating costs
- Or lots more............
Every penny you raised will help so many people through what is probably the toughest time of their life. It has been an absolute pleasure to be part of Badminton 4 Macmillan week”.
One of the events organised by Sport Birmingham, in partnership with Bidgley Power and supported by Badminton England, the event saw 32 people from organisations including Atkins, Cundall, Hozelock, Deutsche Bank and Katie Bard Recruitment take to the court, getting active, making new business connections and raising an impressive £258.00 in the process.
Lucy Williams from Katie Bard was playing in a competition for the first time and managed to come away with the bronze medal:
"Having never played badminton before, my colleague and I discovered a new found love for the sport!
"It was such a well organised event and catered for all levels. We are now in pursuit of joining clubs locally to us as we had so much fun, and all for a great cause!"
Amy Bird, Investment and Development Manager at Sport Birmingham was delighted with the success of the event: "The badminton event was fantastic and it was great to see so many new players out on the court, many of whom indicated that they would like to continue participating and to raise money for Macmillan was the icing on the cake.
"We are currently in the process of finalising our calendar of workplace sporting activities for 2016, as part of the national Workplace Challenge programme and we hope that we can engage with even more businesses in Birmingham, getting them away from their desks and becoming more active."
