Each year or so, Smile Together employee-owners nominate and choose our corporate charity of the year. As an organisation, we then get behind various fundraising activities from bake sales and raffles to sponsored events and donations for unwanted equipment such as our laptops for children programme and PC’s for Colleagues initiative.
From April 2024 our charity of the year is St Petrocs whose ambition is to end homelessness in Cornwall. We already partner with the charity, including through Cornwall Health for Homeless, and are looking forward to extending our support for their work in providing essential services for everyone without a home in the county.
From 2022 – 2024 our charity of the year was Children’s Hospice South West, who provide care and support to families living in the South West who have children with life-limiting conditions. Over the two years CHSW representatives attended various Smile Together events including our annual Smile (Get) Together in May 2023 and colleagues visited their Little Harbour Hospice and participated in a range of fundraising initiatives including their Ride for Precious Lives Appeal and Rainbow Run. We made a final donation to the charity at our Shareholder Meeting in March 2024, bringing our total to an outstanding £25,365!
Our 2020-2021 charity of the year ‘and a bit’ (with Covid-19 delaying our fundraising activities) was Penhaligon’s Friends, a Cornish charity which supports bereaved children, young people, parents and carers throughout the county and provides training and advice for childcare professionals. Despite the pandemic we raised £1,400, enough to fund a family fun day for some of the bereaved families they support.
From 2017-2019 our chosen charity of the year was Cornwall Air Ambulance. Like us, this is a critical local service so it was a pleasure to fundraise for their successful New Heli Appeal. Over the two years our fabulous team raised £3325 towards the charity’s £2.5m target.
In 2016/17 our chosen charity was the Alzheimers Society – we raised £1200 with various events through the year.
In 2015/16, our chosen charity was CLIC Sargent – we raised over £1000 for a cause that supported the family of one of our team members.
Our collective giving goes even further!
In 2023/2024 we allocated some budget to each practice location for teams to be able to drive social and environmental impact where they live and work. This generated some fantastic ideas, from biodegradable stickers for children visiting the dentist to installing plants, planters and water butts to capture rain water, and also saw us making charitable donations to support:
- The Island Haven – a registered charity fundraising to build and equip a place for the people of the Isles of Scilly to stay in times of need, when undergoing mainland medical treatment
- St Petrocs – specifically their sleeping bag appeal for resource centres across the county, supporting those experiencing homelessness
- Trelya – who enable positive change in West Cornwall’s most under resourced communities and whose Lescudjack building we share in Penzance. Our donation specifically supporting their ’pay it forward’ scheme in their youth and community café
Whenever we upgrade something we try to rehome any unwanted items. In 2019/2020 we donated dental and technological equipment to Dentaid, ComputerAid and local schools. Having rolled out new uniforms to clinical colleagues in 2020/2021 we donated 130 pairs of trousers and 25 unbranded tops to www.jacobswellappeal.org for packing into a container destined for Sierra Leone.
We also encourage individual team members to support our community outreach activities such as Smiles at Sea and our oral health donations project, including through volunteering, to bring more smiles to more communities across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. We were designated #xmaspartyheroes in 2020 and complementing all this are the various other worthy causes that we support through the year such as purchasing hand-crocheted bears and rainbows for NHS Charities Together, donating Cornwall Christmas Boxes and supporting (in some cases hosting) Health for Homeless pop-ups across the county, raising funds on ‘Bring a £1 to work day’ and Christmas Jumper Day for Cornwall Air Ambulance and Save the Children respectively, and so much more!
