Nisa-Today’s Members Raise £31,000 For Birmingham Children’s Hospital

23/11/2009

Six midlands-based Nisa-Today’s retailers hosted a Charity Ball event in Birmingham, raising over £31,000 for Birmingham Children’s Hospital which will pay for new cardiac equipment.

The retailers recognised that the hospital would benefit from such a large donation and decided to accumulate their Making A Difference – Locally (MADL) funds and donate them to the Children’s Hospital. They also invited other retailers, also based in the midlands, to donate the money they had saved in their MADL funds.  As well as donating this impressive sum, many raffle prizes were also donated on the night to the Children’s Hospital which the hospital staff will use to raise additional funds for the Cardiac Unit. 

The MADL charity was formed in May 2008 with the intention of assisting more than 2000 independent retailers throughout the UK with raising money for their local communities. The charity works by a specified amount of the cost of certain products promoted instore being allocated to the retailer’s MADL charity fund. For instance, this month for every 250g box of Thorntons Moments purchased in store, 10p of the sale will go into the retailer’s MADL fund to be donated to their chosen charity. The MADL charity celebrated its one year anniversary in May 2009, raising a total of £1million in its first year. For more information please visit www.makingadifferencelocally.com.

Nisa-Today’s member, Jas Sunner, director of Michaels Supermarket. commented: "The evening was a great success, to enable us to exceed our target of £25,000 members agreed on the night to donate their entire Making A Difference - Locally funds to the hospital. This along with other personal donations meant we were able to smash our target and collect £31,000 on the night. The Nisa members have shown great unity and have enabled the hospital to purchase ECG Monitors, specialist Electric Cots and Oxygen Saturation Monitors for the Cardiac Unit."

Teresa Figari, cardiac liaison sister at Birmingham Children’s Hospital said of the event, “We are really impressed with the efforts of our friends at Nisa-Today’s. The event was brilliantly organised and it was very heart-warming to be raising funds for our young patients in such a positive atmosphere. The money will be spent on additional pieces of equipment that we currently don’t have the budget for, ultimately resulting in a more comfortable hospital experience for our patients and their families. We will never be able to thank everyone who has participated enough.”