New Year's Resolutions: How Cambridge MC is Giving Back

Authors

Content Warning: This article describes charities whose work involves sensitive issues such as incarceration, child loss, humanitarian crises, and antisemitism. 

January is often the time for resolutions. A new year, a new chapter, and a blank slate, it is a month for setting goals, making changes, and starting progress.

At Cambridge Management Consulting, we resolve to give back to society as much as we can, by donating up to 1% of our annual profits to charitable causes, setting aside 1% of our time and expertise each year to be utilised on a pro-bono basis, and partnering with transformative projects and programmes to make a lasting impact on others. Further to this, we hold 1% of our equity for a charitable pay-day in the event of a sale or other significant event.

2023 was a particularly productive year for our ongoing support of such schemes and organisations. Not only did we exceed our usual goal by giving just over 12% of our profits and over 200 days of pro-bono consulting time to support the inspirational work that they achieve, but we took on several interns from the University of Cambridge (from Pembroke College’s Leadership, Enterprise, and Adventure at Pembroke - LEAP - programme) in order to provide valuable work experience and boost their employability. Thus, as we enter 2024 with the resolution to continue and expand this work, we thought it worthwhile to spend a moment highlighting these lifechanging services and the incredible people that organise them.

British Exploring Society

Established in 1932, British Exploring Society (BES) are an equal-opportunities charity devoted to ensuring that all young people are ‘able to contribute confidently in the world’ by organising, fundraising, and leading expeditions across the globe. Combining their threefold values of adventure, knowledge, and personal development, BES work to establish the skills and support each young person will need to take part in an expedition, provide them with the appropriate training, knowledge, and ideas, and bring them on an adventure that promotes experience, diversity, and confidence.

In October of 2023, an enthusiastic team from Cambridge MC took part in one of several hikes in the Lake District to raise money for BES. Generously led by BES’ CEO, Honor Wilson-Fletcher MBE, and trustees, Soo Redshaw and David Wells, the groups involved in the hike achieved an impressive 40km per person, including over 30,000km of ascent across four different peaks. Altogether, the weekend raised over £30,000 for BES, which will contribute to all of their exciting expeditions in 2024, including Dangoor in Iceland and the Hartz Islands and Highlands in Scotland.

Storybook Dads

Storybook Dads was started by Sharon Berry in 2003, after observing how challenging it was for imprisoned parents to stay in contact with their children, and how crucial it was for them to continue to fulfil such aspects of a parental role.

To reconcile this absence, Storybook Dads arranges for prisoners to record themselves reading a children’s storybook onto a CD or DVD, which is then sent to their child, which they can listen to as many times as they like, allowing them to maintain an element of their relationship when doing so tangibly is made difficult. Furthermore, most of these recordings are edited by the prisoners themselves, who are trained by Storybook Dads to use software to remove mistakes and background noise, and add images, music, and sound effects to enhance the stories. Since 2002, more than 900 prisoners have trained to be editors, providing them with long-lasting skills, work experience, and a better chance of employment upon release.

Data from Storybook Dads has shown that 94% of prisoners said that engaging with the project has improved and enriched their relationship with their children, and 84% have said that it has helped to reduce the likelihood of them reoffending. In 2023, Cambridge MC’s in-house digital experts helped to maintain these statistics by developing IOS and Android apps for Storybook Dads, increasing the accessibility of their recordings.

Sands

Sands is a charity which has devoted the last 40 years striving to reduce the number of babies lost in infancy, and provide support to those bereaving the death of a baby either before, during, or shortly after their birth. Around 4,500 babies are tragically lost each year, but without scientists, doctors, midwives, or parents understanding why; Sands works in partnership with healthcare professionals to research and improve understanding of this loss and drive changes in maternity policy.

In 2023, we helped to further the important work completed by Sands by building a new website for one of their core programmes; this will go live later this year.

Télécoms Sans Frontières

Founded in 1998, Télécoms Sans Frontières (TSF) are the world’s first NGO focusing on emergency-response technologies. Operating during humanitarian crises, TSF not only build rapid-response communications centres for local and international responders, but provide those affected with ways to contact their loved ones and regain control of their lives. In the 26 years since its establishment, TSF have responded to over 140 crises in over 70 countries, providing communication to over 20 million people and nearly 1,000 NGOs.

Furthermore, TSF are also concerned with developing and disseminating innovative and cost-effective solutions to assist migrants, refugees, and displaced people, as well as other disadvantaged communities in different areas, including education, healthcare, women’s rights, and food security. In 2023, we donated a portion of our profits to furthering these efforts.

Community Security Trust

Established in 1994, Community Security Trust (CST) is a UK-based charity which protects Jews from antisemitism and related threats by promoting positive relations between British Jews and the rest of British society, and representing British Jews on relevant issues. Primarily, their aim is to support victims of antisemitism and increase the safety and security of Jewish life; they achieve this through the provision of security advice and training for Jewish communal organisations, schools, and synagogues. Altogether, CST’s security services cover over 650 communal buildings and around 1,000 communal events annually.

In October of 2023, we donated a portion of our profits to support the incredible work that CST achieve, and further the fight against prejudice in the UK.

LEAP

In the 2022-23 academic year, Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge launched their Leadership, Enterprise & Adventure at Pembroke (LEAP) Programme. LEAP aims to give back by supporting their students to develop their confidence, transferable skills, and career prospects through the provision of training, mentoring, and internship opportunities.

As a Fellow of Pembroke College, Chairman of Cambridge MC, Tim Passingham, was keen for the company to be involved in this exciting programme, and in September partnered with LEAP to take on an intern within our Marketing Department. Shania McNally, a third-year student studying Human, Social, and Political Sciences at Pembroke College, was given a months’ worth of marketing experience, including designing social media graphics, building webpages, and writing an insight article for our blog. Further to this, our sister-company, edenseven, for whom Tim is also Co-Founder and Non-Executive Director, employed another of Pembroke’s students through the LEAP scheme, Freya Arnott, to understand and support their data-driven sustainability projects. During her month’s internship, Freya assisted with researching and producing edenseven’s report on the FTSE250 companies’ lack of progress toward decarbonisation goals.

We look forward to working alongside the LEAP programme in 2024, and helping more interns to gain valuable real-world skills at Cambridge MC.

Heal

Heal is a charitable foundation dedicated to raising money in order to buy land and rewild it. With 41% of animal species in decline, 1 in 10 threatened with extinction, and 133 already declared extinct since the 1500s, the UK is particularly lacking in biodiversity. It is Heal’s mission to decelerate and ultimately rectify this by locating land that is degraded and working to rejuvenate it into a host for wild plants and roaming animals.

As a sustainability-driven and environmentally-conscious organisation, particularly since the establishment of our sister-company, edenseven, we have donated a portion of our profits to Heal in order to further their three-fold commitment to rewilding, climate, and wellbeing, particularly in the Naze peninsula in Essex.

A New Chapter

At Cambridge MC, we feel most positive and fulfilled by our work when it is driven by the opportunity to give back to and promote the work completed by generous and inspirational organisations. 2023 was a particularly productive year for this venture, allowing us to become acquainted with and understand these projects, and support them through both donations and our own in-house expertise, which we have used to develop platforms to further their reach, and provide valuable skills and guidance.

In 2024, our resolve is to continue this support, and further endorse the crucial and life-changing work achieved by such incredible foundations.

About Cambridge Management Consulting

Cambridge Management Consulting (Cambridge MC) is an international consulting firm that helps companies of all sizes have a better impact on the world. Founded in Cambridge, UK, initially to help the start-up community, Cambridge MC has grown to over 150 consultants working on projects in 20 countries.

Our capabilities focus on supporting the private and public sector with their people, process and digital technology challenges.

For more information visit www.cambridgemc.com or get in touch below.