Markerstudy raises more than £10,000 and volunteers over 125 hours in September

Busy month sees Group hold Charity Hackathon and celebrate annual Markerstudy Day

September was a busy volunteering and fundraising month for Markerstudy Group as it held its inaugural Charity Hackathon and celebrated Markerstudy Day. The former saw colleagues volunteering their time and skills to help three charities – Auditory Verbal UK, Future First and Little Miracles – resolve challenging business issues, while the latter invited colleagues across the business to take part in a variety of fun activities to raise money for a specific charity. This year’s event raised £10,289 for Alzheimer’s Society.

Held in the Group’s Peterborough office, 17 colleagues from IT, Group Marketing, Finance and Customer Service took part in the Charity Hackathon and helped tackle specific challenges each charity was facing.

“We want to say thank you to Markerstudy for inviting us to take part in their Charity Hackathon,” said Sarah Henry, senior development manager at AVUK. “The team harnessed their technological wizardry to create innovative solutions that will truly make a difference to our cause, including creating videos, providing partner advice and offering some brilliant tips to maximise our website and social media content.”

Explaining how the event had helped Little Miracles, Louise Evans, head of income generation, said: “We’re so grateful to the team at Markerstudy for their time. We’re already trialling taking donations directly when our families book onto events, which will mean that not only will we save huge amounts of time and money, but we’ll also make the booking process a lot easier for our families.”

“The Hackathon was an immensely helpful experience for our marketing and communications team,” said Jonika Kinchin, marketing and communications manager at Future First. “The invaluable advice and guidance we received resulted in some quick wins, which were immediately actionable and realistic to complete in-house.”

Rounding up the month was Markerstudy Day, a group-wide initiative which has seen millions of pounds donated to charitable causes since 2001. This year, there was a week-long fundraising effort with colleagues raising over £5,000 from their activities such as bake sales, memory walks and wearing denim for dementia. Markerstudy also donated £5,000 as part of its charity initiative, Motiv8, which saw the efforts totalling over £10,000 for the Alzheimer’s Society.

Lizzie Smith-Foreman, director of group marketing, communications and sustainability, commented: “We’re renowned for ‘putting the fun into insurance’ and this certainly applies to our charitable endeavours too. Whether it’s fundraising or donating our time to help others, I’m proud of all our colleagues coming together to help make real change for the communities we live and work in.”