Who are The Giving Back Guild?
At iTech you’ll find a load of guilds, or rather, groups of people who share a common interest or passion.
From photography to gaming, there are all sorts of guilds open to anyone who wants to join.
The one I’m going to tell you about today is one I’m particularly proud of being a part of: The Giving Back Guild.
We focus on charity and sustainability initiatives at iTech to help the wider community and do our bit for the environment — anything that can help Arcs make a meaningful impact.
How it all started
Last year, while iTech HQ’s expansion was underway, I spoke to office manager Thea about some ideas for making it as green as possible. She said others had also been messaging her about sustainability and charity stuff, so she suggested we all hop on a call to share our ideas.
And so, in October last year, The Giving Back Guild was born.
Except, we were originally called the ‘corporate social responsibility’ group.
I’m not sure about you, but the word ‘corporate’ is enough to send shivers down my spine. It also couldn’t be further from iTech’s culture, so we soon rebranded to The Giving Back Guild: a strong team of seven with a clear mission, complete with our own logo.
Since then, we’ve been meeting every other week to share ideas and start putting wheels into motion.
What we’ve done so far
Within three weeks we’d got our first initiative off the ground: the #MilesForMeals campaign.
The coronavirus has had a devastating impact on Camden (where our office is based), with more children becoming eligible for free school meals than ever — and many going without.
The guild wanted to help the most at-risk families in the borough by providing much-needed food vouchers, so we set a goal to provide 4,000 meals through a local charity.
Instead of just asking Arcs for donations, we wanted to do something where everyone could get involved and work towards a goal together, which is how we came up with the idea of sponsored miles.
Not the kind of sponsored walk you do at primary school when you have to pester all your neighbours, rather where there’s a sole sponsor (thanks, iTech) pledging around £2 for every mile moved.
We teamed up with our heads of wellbeing and engineering to create a mile tracker and, for the month of November, Arcs were encouraged to log every mile that they walked, ran, swam, cycled or whatever they wanted.
It was a great way to keep everyone motivated, knowing that every mile logged would help hit the target of 5,000 miles. We ended up reaching our goal before the month was up and were able to provide the vital funds for families in Camden.
Then, in December, we raised £1,235 through our Christmas raffle. Instead of the company choosing a charity, Arcs were allowed to donate to any charity of their choice and would get one ticket for every £5 donated.
For International Women’s Day, everyone in the company was allowed to vote on a women’s charity of their choice (we’d picked a handful as a group) with each voting equating to £20.
What to expect in the future
This month it’s #MakeMarchMeaningful (not sure why all our campaigns start with an ‘m’) and we’ve got a number of things going on.
We’ve got a charity quiz coming up where the winner gets to choose a charity to donate the entry fee pot to, as well win a £50 voucher for the shop of their choice.
Running throughout the month is the option to donate our Friday lunch budget too. Each week everyone gets £13 to spend on lunch, so we’ve set up a page where you can choose to give the money to a charity instead.
iTech has also made the very generous decision to donate £8,900 more to help feed 400+ children in Camden over Easter through our charity partner, Feast with Us. Thank you to the legendary “RB” in finance for signing this one off (notoriously hard to squeeze money out of).
We’re also working on some volunteering initiatives, ways to make iTech as green as it can be and some other exciting projects that we can’t reveal quite yet — watch this space!
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