Hegarty – have fun, do good

Hegarty are celebrating the law firm’s 50th anniversary not with champagne and lavish parties, but by giving back to the community. We spoke to Marketing Manager, Laura Charnley, to find out more...

You’ve now officially made a start on your 50-year celebrations, which is basically the incredible goal of supporting 50 charities – plus the four you would already support in any year – throughout 2024. How is it going?
We have all 50 community initiatives on our website, and we’ve already finished three with four more underway. These initiatives consist of various activities aimed at supporting community groups and charities in the local areas around our Peterborough, Stamford, Market Deeping and Oakham offices. We have a diverse range of activities, including donations to homeless charities, sponsoring local sports teams, and planting trees. The goal is to have a total of 50 activities taking place throughout the year. In addition to these activities, we will also be doing some fundraising internally with our staff for our four chosen charities of the year. By the end of the year, we hope to have raised a substantial amount of money that
we can split between these charities. One of the main fundraising events is the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge in June, which about 20 members of staff will be participating in. We aim to raise significant funds for the charities through this event. Additionally, we have planned several other smaller events throughout the year, including a virtual cycle challenge, dress down days, and bake sales in the office.

How have the charities been chosen, throughout the different offices?
We looked at the locations of each of our offices and asked our staff to submit their suggestions for charities within those areas, then asked staff to vote on them, so it’s very much the staff that have chosen them. Our staff all live in those surrounding areas, so it’s charities that they are passionate about or that are local to them, or that they have had personal involvement with. Then, yes, the charities that had the most votes from our staff were selected. We wanted to select one charity from each office area. Normally, we support one overall charity for the year, but since it’s our 50th anniversary, we wanted to be a bit more ambitious by supporting four charities.

What sort of thing are you doing?
In January, we supported Shine Charity by sponsoring balloons for their charity balloon race. We also supported an organisation called Circus Starr by purchasing tickets for local children with disabilities, disadvantaged or challenging backgrounds to attend their wonderful circus events. Additionally, we held a charity staff quiz, the proceeds of which will be split between our charities. Moving on to February, we are collecting donations for the Peterborough Soup Kitchen and also donating Easter eggs to Little Miracles. Our goal is to have about four activities each month. We aim to choose local causes that are making a real difference to communities in our local areas. While many of these causes are based in Peterborough, where our head office is located, we are also supporting community organisations and charities in Stamford, Oakham and Market Deeping. The causes are not limited to charities – some of the organizations we support are local sports teams, such as the Deepings Rangers football team and cricket clubs. Our aim is to provide support to a diverse range of groups in the local community because we know that many of them lack sufficient support and funding. Our assistance can make a significant difference, whether it’s in acquiring resources or finding a place to meet. Some of our staff members will also volunteer their time – each staff member has been allocated one volunteering day per year, which they can use to support their chosen cause.

It sounds as though it’s as much about helping to raise awareness as much as raising money for these charities
Yes, it’s raising awareness of our involvement in the local community and also helping to raise awareness of all these great causes and community groups. Any monetary donations are for our charities of the year, while the other 50 initiatives are more active contributions. This might include volunteering our time or donating tinned goods to the food bank. We might also donate gardening tools if we’re going to help plant trees for the day for example, and similar activities. We’re trying for a mixture of actions and giving!

It must be really challenging. How are your staff fitting it all in with the day job?
Our staff are really enthusiastic about volunteering and they’re quite happy to be given a day to choose how they get involved. It can be tricky to fit it in, but with it being our 50th year, we do want to set ourselves a challenge, so we’re just trying to use it as a focus. Many of these activities are wonderful to do – you know, we spend a lot of time in our office, with a great deal
of paperwork and staring at a screen, so actually it’s quite nice for staff to have the opportunity to get out and do something a bit different, meet people, including some of our clients and contacts in the local community.

It also highlights that Hegarty must be a really nice place to work!
I think it’s nice to give staff the opportunity to do things outside their day job, and also for them to suggest causes that have had an impact on their own lives or the community they live in.

Also, as well as staff having the chance to support local communities and charities through these initiatives, a lot of the activities we are planning are fun and mean our teams from all offices have opportunities to get together and work as a team or to compete in quizzes together and cheer each other on, so it makes for a nice way of getting the whole team together.

To find out more about how you can help, raise money or get involved, visit hegarty.co.uk/about-us/hegarty-at-50