Mace teams takeover Mind shops for charity challenge

Teams from professional services firm Mace have, as part of the Mind Retail Challenge, raised £6,000 for Mind, an England and Wales based mental health charity. The firm’s teams competed against each other to collect free goods and used a variety of efforts to boost sales at the charity’s shops, with Mace's Birmingham team raising the largest portion.

Mind is one of the UK’s largest charity organisations focused on supporting people and communities deal with mental health problems. Mental health problems can create considerable burdens on those whom are affected. Mind provides those affected with a range of information, from an infoline and online publications to a Legal Advice Service. To fund the charity’s activities, around 150 Mind shops have been set up across England and Wales, selling a range of donated items, from second hand games and clothes to, at some shops, furniture.

As part of the Mace’s corporate responsibility activities, the firm in December 2015 selected Mind as its Charity of the year. To support the charity in a creative way, staff from five UK teams from London, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester and Leeds volunteered to run one of Mind’s local charity shops. The aim of the exercise was to deploy the teams’ entrepreneurial skills to see which team would be able to generate the most return from their respective Mind store for the charity.

The teams were given six weeks to develop a strategy, meet with local volunteers at the shops as well as gather a trove of donate goods for possible sale from their respective stores. The teams then had one week to deploy their strategy and collect the returns from goods through whichever means they developed. Across all teams, 83 bags of stock was donated to the shops, while a total of 312 hours of volunteer service was racked up – the final telly, which was matched by the Mace Foundation, stood at £6,000. The firm’s Birmingham team came out ahead, with a total of £715 raised for Mind.

Simon Dale, Business Unit Director for Central and South West, says, “It was fantastic to have the opportunity to be involved in the Mind Retail Challenge, and to support such a worthy cause. We all have busy schedules but it’s important to make time to give back to the communities we live and work in.”

Nicola Carney, Store Manager at Mind, says, “The Mace team fitted in really well, we loved having them in our stores. They came with a positive attitude, a helping hand and bags of donated clothes! We would like them to come back every day.”