Giving Something Back survey results
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We all work in local government for one reason; to help make a difference to Birmingham and the lives of its citizens. ‘Giving Something Back’ is a unique opportunity for Generation BEST members to do even more, by working together with a team of like-minded colleagues from across the council on volunteering and fundraising projects with local charities.
To launch this initiative, Generation BEST members have been busy taking part in a survey to share their views with the BEST team. The positive response to the survey showed that there is plenty of enthusiasm for ‘Giving Something Back’, with members voting for their favourite local charity and having their say in how Generation BEST should support its work.
We weren’t surprised to hear that our energetic and generous members were keen to get involved with charities in person, by giving up their own time through volunteering (32.9%) fundraising challenges (30%), or helping with promotional work (21.4%). Only 11.4% said they would prefer to support charities by making donations and 4.3% in some other way.
Joint winners of the poll for our network charity, with 15.6% of the vote each, were St Basils action for Birmingham’s young homeless and Envision, which inspires local 16-19 year-olds to create and organise their own community improvement projects. Age Concern came a very close third with 13.5% of the vote. As the top three charities had a similar number of votes, we will aim to support them all in some way through ‘Giving Something Back’ this year.
11.5% of members who responded said they would prefer to support a charity other than the ones we listed, and suggested a long list of excellent causes ranging from Cancer Research, NSPCC, faith charities and Seeds for Africa, to charities closer to home such as Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Acorn Children’s Hospice and Birmingham Lifestyles.
The survey also revealed that an overwhelming majority of Generation BEST members (96.3%) would like to volunteer to help Council colleagues in other teams with projects from BEST workshop actions.
Based on the feedback we have received and encouraged by such an enthusiastic response, the BEST team have already started to contact local charities and to search BEST action projects to identify exciting volunteering and fundraising ideas that we can do as a group. We will be organising our first ‘Giving Something Back’ activities soon so please keep an eye on these web pages and on your email for details.
