Exceptional Fundraising Year Raises £17,864 for Local Children and Families

It’s been another fantastic year of fundraising here at Club Towers and we are absolutely thrilled to announce that we have raised £17,864!  This will be split equally between member chosen charities FACES and St John’s School in Kempston.

This amazing total is only possible due to the generosity of the Club, our wonderful members and staff team and the charities are extremely grateful.  We started the fundraising year last September with our popular cake and coffee morning. This was followed by the super ambitious 24-hour racquets challenge with member Andy Hayward and MD Matthew Towers completing 24 hours of tennis and squash respectively in October. They were joined by members across the day and evening playing matches and taking part in mini tournaments.  A truly exhausting achievement on their part and we hope that those who did join us agree it was an inspiring and fun 24 hours!  Jumping ahead to March, over 50 members joined us for our charity spinathon and our brilliant group cycle instructors led them through five back-to-back classes with some awesome programmes, music and outfits! 

Shortly afterwards we had our Spring cake and coffee morning, which thanks to kind donations of cakes from members (special mention to master baker Missi who always donates a cake shop worth of cakes!), staff and suppliers raised a record amount for one of our mornings.  Two children from St John’s along with their Acting Headteacher Shannon Poulter were able to come and visit us for some cake and an impromptu squash session which made the morning extra special.  And, most recently, member Chris Callow undertook a personal challenge with the support of our PTs Jan and Neeraj to complete a 100km rowing challenge here at the Club.  Not only did he complete it, but he also managed to finish in 7 hours, 14 minutes and 43 seconds!  And raised £967!  Phenomenal!

Lastly you may recall we introduced our £5 social guest fee in April 2023, and the Club passes all of these payments straight through to the charities. This added £2,715 to the annual total raised, producing the final grand total of £17,864.  We had the pleasure of telling both charities and having photos with the giant cheque earlier this month.  Michaela Martindale, CEO from FACES came into the Club and was presented with the cheque by GM Steve Davies.

She expressed her thanks “A big thank you to Club Tower’s members for choosing us as their charity of the year and raising and amazing £8,932 for FACES Bedford. As a small charity in the Borough, unrestricted funds like these really make a difference to enable us to support the most vulnerable families”.

One initiative the money will help with is their relatively new Baby Bank which helps families who need baby items and clothes.  The Baby Bank takes donations from those who no longer need clothes (up to age 7), equipment as well as items such as nappies and wipes and passes them onto those most at need.  This brilliant project is run by member Jennie Bayliss and she will be a the Club (in the car park) on 2/9th August (tbc), if members have any items they would like to donate.  We are also currently collecting new stationary for them; they are hoping to give these to children as they return to school in September.  Donations of pens, pencils, pads, pencil cases etc. can be dropped off at Reception until the end of July.

Steve and Marketing Manager Jo visited the other chosen charity, St John’s School in Kempston and had the pleasure of meeting several of the children and seeing first-hand the impact the money raised will and has already made.

Amanda Rizzo Assistant Headteacher at the School asked us to share how the money we have raised will be spent and also their gratitude: “St John’s school have been overwhelmed by the amount of money raised by Club Towers and their members through their phenomenal challenges!  We have allocated the money to buying resources to improve the physical development of our pupils, this has included floatation devices for hydrotherapy sessions and a fantastic sensory theatre experience.  Everyone at St John’s is incredibly grateful to all at Club Towers.” 

Thank you to everyone at St John’s for making us so welcome.

That does bring us to the end of our fundraising year and so the charity nomination process for the next 12 months is now open, if you’d like to nominate a local charity for us to support for 2024-2025, all the information you need is here.  Once a shortlist of qualifying charities has been created, we then ask members to vote and the two charities with the most votes are the ones we will support.

Thank you again to all members and staff for helping us to reach such a wonderful total!