RSM Reading Charity of the Year

We are grateful to be the charity of the year for RSM Reading. We interviewed Faye, who chose us as their charity, to understand the process and how she has found fundraising for us.

- Introduction

Faye Rota, 28. I lost my dad when I was 26 years old. He had a long-term degenerative illness that started when I was around 18 and got progressively worse. I was at an age where I know how lucky I was to have had 26 years with my dad but I felt robbed of experiencing so many things with him. I was old enough to be living my own life but my dad was still the first person I called when I needed advice or had good news or bad news. He was still very much my safety net and the first person I would turn to.

 

- Could you explain briefly about choosing It's Time for your charity of the year? Did you have to present the cause in any way, was it a case of every employee choosing a charity and then eventually picking just one to support etc?

Each year our office chooses an office charity to fundraise for. Everyone is asked if they would like to nominate a charity and then a select few are chosen to present in front of the office and everyone votes on which they would like to support. It hadn’t yet reached the one year mark of losing my dad and everyone in my team and the wider office had been so supportive throughout the past year that I felt ready to talk about my experience and It’s Time. There are a lot of young adults in our line of work as people tend to join from school and university, so I knew it was likely that others had been affected in a similar way.

- What kind of fundraising activities have you done as part of the charity of the year?  

We’ve just started our fundraising efforts but to date we have done:

  • Charity ‘call my bluff’ wine tasting;

  • Office football tournament;

  • Charity quiz;

  • Super raffle with some amazing prizes from local businesses;

  • Silent auctions (signed football shirts, Porsche bonnet wall art etc)

     

- How do you motivate people in your office to take part?

I think given the fact it’s a cause that is so close to mine (and others) hearts everyone is already motivated to raise as much as we can. We also have a service line element to compete to raise the most funds. More widely, the whole firm runs an ‘RSM Together’ initiative with additional prizes and match fundraising.

If you would like to choose It’s Time as your charity of the year, please email us at hello@itstimecharity.co.uk