Home Group is a social enterprise located in Newcastle. Their financial support arm, The Home Group Fund joined easyfundraising in May 2024 and in their first six months, they have raised more than £2,000 in free funding! We wanted to find out more about them and how this money will help their service users, so we sat down with Chanelle from Home Group to learn all about them.
Tell us all about Home Group
Home Group is a housing association, but with a difference. As one of the UK’s largest providers of housing, health and care, Home Group has been making a difference to people’s lives since 1935. Created in the North East but now with a presence in England and Scotland, Home Group support over 125,000 customers across more than 56,000 homes!
Home Group is a social enterprise that supports some of the most vulnerable in society, including people with mental and physical health issues. For over 80 years, we’ve been on a mission to build homes, independence, and aspirations – and we’re as determined today as when we started.
Home Group fund, which is the part of the organisation registered with easyfundraising, sits within Home Group and supports our customers with the supply of essential items such as food, white goods and other household items.
What do you need funding for? Are you currently fundraising for something specifically?
The cost-of-living crisis has placed even greater pressure on our services, so we are constantly looking for more ways we can support the most vulnerable in maintaining their independence. One of the main things we fundraise for is the provision of food vouchers so that we can be sure our customers have access to proper nutrition and warm meals, especially important in the winter. The next most frequent requirement is a bed and mattress to ensure our customers can sleep in comfort, which again is so important for their physical and mental wellbeing.
Why did you choose to sign up to easyfundraising?
I attended a Get Grants session [Get Grants are a partner of easyfundraising, providing community causes with access to our funding platform] where I learnt all about the platform and felt it was a no-brainer to sign us up – it’s free money and so simple to do.
You have over 300 supporters raising for you, which you have recruited in just six months – how have you done it?
We’ve made full use of the ‘Promote my cause’ area of our profile. All of the ready made resources are great including the flyers, whatsapp messages and social posts – we can literally post onto our social media channels in minutes which has been very important for us, social media has definitely been the most effective channel for us. We can get the message in front of people when they are about to shop online.
The incentives have proven really useful as well – we can collect bonus donations when we recruit supporters with our referral link and they start raising. We’ve taken full advantage of this message when promoting to our community.
How have the funds you’ve raised so far been used?
We have provided a food boxes for families, beds and mattresses, and for one of our customers we funded a new pair of specially made shoes. He had size 17.5 feet and it was difficult for him to easily access some!
Our payment in November is going towards 5 seperate families to provide them with a food voucher, a microwave, bed and mattress, bedding and clothing.
What other fundraising do you do?
We hold Christmas Jumper Day each year, we sell calendars that feature photos that colleagues take thoughout the year. We do an afternoon tea and cake session, hold a raffle and tombola. We also do some challenge style events such as our cycle event over 3 days, Great North Run (which is held right on our doorstep) in September, as well as hosting a Halloween fright night.
What advice would you give to other causes to help them raise as well as you have?
Social media has really been key for us. We don’t just post randomly though, we follow a weekly plan – and we make sure we post over weekends / evenings and more so at key shopping times to make sure we are front of mind when people will be buying.
We also make sure that we include updates on how much we’ve raised and what the money raised is going to do or buy – true stories are the best to appeal to people.
Do you have a message for your supporters?
Thank you for supporting The Home Group Fund! Thanks to you, we can help and support more customers in crisis though your daily shopping. We know you can’t always sponsor someone to take part in an event or have extra money to donate. Just by taking that extra step when you shop you are really making a huge difference to the most vulnerable in society.
How you can support the Home Group Fund
The work that Home Group and the Home Group Fund do really provides a lifeline to those in financial need. If you would like to raise free donations for them with every online shop, you can sign up to support them here: https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/cause/home-group-fund/
Belong to an organisation that needs extra funding? Register a good cause here: https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/register-your-good-cause/.
If you would like to know more about Home Group or access their services, visit their website: https://www.homegroup.org.uk/
