25 June

Over 100 businesses attend City Giving Day breakfast

The Lord Mayor of the City of London Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli joined over 100 City business representatives at Mansion House on 12 June at the City Giving Day Engagement Breakfast. 

This year’s City Giving Day Engagement Breakfast gave City philanthropists and corporates the opportunity to share their plans for September and provided strategies to get the most out of the day.

Guests also heard from an array of inspiring speakers including The Lord Mayor of the City of London Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli, Rebecca Howie, Data Solutions Senior Manager at Fidelity International and Charles Fulton, Founder at jumblebee.

Rebecca Howie from Fidelity International was quick to remind businesses not yet signed up to ‘use this opportunity to showcase the brilliant fundraising and volunteering you do all year round and engage employees in a fun way’.

Long-term City Giving Day participants, Fidelity International have hosted everything from their popular mini golf competition to catering team bake sales to entering multiple teams for Tour de City, and will take part again in 2024.  

Charles Fulton shared his experience on the positive power of fundraising since starting jumblebee 12 years ago and since raising over 55 million for a number of charities.

He said;

“Having a fundraising goal, whether a financial target or a specific date in the diary creates a community, a group of people with a common cause. City Giving Day, with its network of hundreds of businesses, actually creates one of the biggest fundraising communities in the country, where thousands of associates have a common fundraising objective for the day.” 

Back for the second year running, jumblebee will host an online auction for City Giving Day. Raising funds for The Lord Mayor’s Appeal, the auction relies on prizes from City businesses and Fulton asked corporates across the Square Mile to dig deep before the auction opens for bids in early September.

The pre-City Giving Day breakfasts are a chance for companies to check in on their progress and be inspired from other event ideas from hosting an office sports day to organising a company-wide sponsored silence to putting on a bake sale.

In addition to their own fundraising activities, The Lord Mayor’s Appeal also hosts a number of annual City Giving Day events which companies are welcome to join. These include:

• Tour de City, a static Wattbike challenge where company teams of up to five people compete against each other in a thrilling 40 minute static bike race, divided into five eight-minute slots
• City Walks – a one hour lunchtime walking tour taking place around the City hosted by expert City of London Guides
• Treasure Hunt - inviting teams of up to six people to solve a series of clues discovering some little known facts about the City of London; and a Quiz Night challenging teams of up to six to test their general knowledge and compete with the greatest minds in the City

Funds raised by The Lord Mayor’s Appeal on City Giving Day will be used to support the work of its three charity partners, MQ Mental Health Research, Homewards and National Numeracy. 

Register for City Giving Day 2024 here