Community: Supporting with time & money

Community is important to Mewburn Ellis. For us this means nurturing our people, helping everyone develop and contributing to the wider communities in which we operate, as well as supporting worthy causes with time and money. As a firm we have made a commitment to donate 1% of our profits to charity as well as over 250 days of time to good causes. We support charities at a firmwide and local office level and do this through our Forward Community Programme Charity Fund.

We donate all of our old desktop PCs to the charity PCrefurb an independent not-for-profit community group with the aim of engaging the IT skills of vulnerable and hard-to-reach individuals to “rescue” unwanted IT equipment. They refurbish donated IT equipment and redistribute it to those most in need, helping people connect with training and education and to support their well-being.  So far we have donated 58 desktops and 16 monitors with more to come.  Our commitment to supporting the work that PCrefurb do means that many more vulnerable people will be helped to get online.

This year we have decided to support the British Science Association as our firmwide charity as well as Coronavirus related charities at a firmwide level. Our people have also chosen a local charity for each office. We have also given all our people one community day per year to enable them to support causes they care about. In addition we operate a Give As You Earn (GAYE) scheme, so our people can donate to charities of their choice in a simple and tax effective way. Our combined community effort amounts to more than £130,000 of investment and over 250 days of time donated to good causes. Find out more below about our plans for charitable giving of both time and money.

This is in addition to our more ad hoc fund raising activity, where we have supported charities and events such as Genes for Jeans, Children in Need and Save the Children. We are also an active supporter of UK Youth, a leading national charity, committed to providing access to appropriate, high quality services in every community so that young people are empowered to build bright futures, regardless of their background or circumstances.

We have chosen to donate to Coronavirus related charities as we believe this is where our money is most needed at the moment. We have made donations to four specific charities to cover appeals for help in a range of areas. In addition to a firm donation we have also matched all donations made by our people to these charities:

• The National Emergencies Trust
• Age UK Coronavirus Appeal
• The Trussell Trust
• NHS Charities Together
  
  

Firmwide Charity

We have also now finalised an agreement to work with the British Science Association (BSA) as our main firmwide charity. We have made a £40,000 donation to them to help young people, no matter what their background, get into science.

The BSA’s mission is to transform the diversity and inclusivity of science; to reach under-served audiences; and to increase the number of people who are actively engaged and involved in science. We are proud to now be a national sponsor of the CREST Awards.

Local Office Charities

Our people have also chosen the charities they would like to support at a local, office level. Earlier in the year, each office got together to talk about what was important to them and created a short list of charities they would like to support. One charity was then chosen by an office vote and this is the charity the office will support for two years until the end of March 2022.

Our choices for 2020/22 are:

• Bristol: Help Bristol Homeless a charity that supports homeless and raising awareness of homelessness in Bristol by providing a gated community of 15 self contained flats.
• Cambridge: East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices, which cares for children and young people with life-threatening conditions across Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, and supports their families.
• London: Shelter from the Storm, an emergency night shelter located not far from our London office, providing bed, dinner and breakfast for 38 homeless people every night of the year.
• Manchester: The Christie Charitable Fund , a Manchester based hospital, which provides cancer care, research and education.
• Munich: KARLA 51 Women’s Shelter, a Munich based, women only shelter supporting women and children and providing beds for 55 women each night.

Other Charitable Donations

We have all watched the harrowing scenes coming from Afghanistan with shock and disbelief as the situation has unfolded. We believe that we cannot stand by and we must do something to help in some way. Mewburn Ellis has donated £10,000 from our Forward Community Charity Fund to The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Afghanistan Appeal.

The UNHCR teams remain on the ground in Afghanistan where it is safe to do so to help fleeing Afghans with emergency shelter, food, health, water and sanitation support and cash assistance. This help includes the distribution of family tents, hygiene kits and core relief items like blankets, sleeping mats and kitchen sets.  We hope that our donation can make a small difference.

We chose the UNHCR because their focus is on practical help now for whoever needs it, but they also look longer term on how people can be resettled and lives rebuilt. They are also active political advocates at a global level. For example UNHCR is advocating for the international community to support both Afghanistan and also neighbouring countries, Pakistan and Iran, which are already hosting over 2 million Afghan refugees.