Charity begins here

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three;
but the greatest of these is charity.

I make absolutely no apology for the huge number of stories about charity fund-raising that we’ve been featuring recently.

The industry has been through some of the toughest times that any of us can ever remember so the fact that people are still prepared to get on their bikes – literally in many cases – and go all out to raise money for some amazing causes deserves, in my opinion, publicising and publicising loudly.

Whether it’s walking up Snowdon every week for a year or walking the West Highland Way, cycling round your branches, growing incredible moustaches, cycling through the Alps, doing the London to Brighton bike-rise and not being able to sit down for a week afterwards or simply just donating materials or time, the amount of effort that people in this industry put in astounds me.

We may have gone a bit crazy with the Keyline rally this time but it helped that I’ve been receiving tweets, photos and Facebook postings all the way through from DJ and Andrew in the Marshalls Mini.

It may seem that there is a bias towards the charity efforts of the bigger companies but that is purely down to a PR function. I can’t publicise someone’s efforts if I don’t know about them.

So, if you are doing something for charity and you want people in the industry to know about it then drop me an email or a phone call. I can’t promise that I will get everything in, but I can promise that I will try to. And if you have an online donation page then please include the link to it. I can’t make people donate, but I can at least give them the opportunity.

I do the Race for Life every year and I know how hard it can be to get motivated and to ask people for money when times are tough. But I also know what a fantastic feeling it is when you’ve achieved your target and know that you’ve done something good for other people. There’s nothing like it for putting your own petty problems into perspective.

So, thanks to everyone who’s made the effort to do something for charity and also to those of you who’ve sponsored a colleague, family member or friend. Every single penny helps and there are some awesome causes out there.

A collective pat on the back all round.