Hg giving

In April 2021 Hg launched its own charitable giving platform, Hg Giving, via Benevity. Through Hg Giving employees are able to:

  • Make personal donations to the causes they care about via payroll, credit card or PayPal.
  • Receive automated 1:1 matching on their contributions, doubling the impact of their giving.
  • Sign up to volunteering campaigns and events, and receive rewards for any logged volunteering hours.
  • Create their fundraising pages to share with colleagues, friends and family.
  • Keep up to date with charities, internal Hg fundraising and volunteering events.

Since the platform was launched last year >$400,000 has been collectively donated across 272 charities, with over 80% of employees actively participating in giving or volunteering campaigns.

As well as personal donations by employees, the Hg Charity Committee made donations to a number of organisations linked to key giving events such as International Women’s Day, Pride Month, Earth Day and Mental Health Awareness Week.

In the wake of the war in Ukraine, the Charity Committee made donations to UNICEF, The Red Cross, UNHCR and International Medical corps and also increased the match amount on any employee donations from 1:1 to 1:3. The Benevity platform has enabled us to give to vetted organisations that are delivering aid to refugees fleeing Ukraine.

Employees enthusiastically get behind charity fundraiser events and are often keen to financially support them too.

Giving campaigns are often made fun and help connect people from across all parts of Hg.

Future Steps

London staff from Hg participated in the 2022 Future Steps challenge, completing on average 280,000 steps each, equivalent to 140 miles, five and a bit marathons and eight trips up and down Ben Nevis. This raised almost £10,000 for the Prince’s Trust, at a time when such outdoor support for young people is needed more than ever.

Race the Thames

After the success of previous year’s event, we had four Hg teams enter 2022’s Race the Thames challenge, with each team having to compete with one another to complete 346km (the full length of the River Thames) in seven days with the fastest pace possible, come sun, rain or snow. Overall Hg put in a great performance both on and off the tarmac – placing 2nd in the Financial Services category, 10th overall and in pole position for raising the most money with each team donating £12k to Samaritans & London Youth Rowing Charity.

Impetus Triathlon 2021

On Saturday 18th September a brave bunch from across Hg took part in various disciplines at the annual Impetus Triathlon. Hg took first place in the Olympic triathlon relay and also the Sprint triathlon relay with one of our swimmers overtaking 13 others on the 1,500m lap emerging second! 16 people took part from Hg in total; all our teams put in a very impressive display and Impetus raised over £400k on the day.

The Thames Ten

On a sunny Friday afternoon in July, seven of Hg walked the glorious ten bridges from Tower Bridge to Vauxhall Bridge in just two hours and four minutes raising £866 towards MIND, the national association for mental health, which was doubled by the charity committee.

Stepney City Farm

Five volunteers (Hg & family) spent the day in East London volunteering at Stepney City Farm. The day included a variety of activities, including creating a path with woodchip on top and feeding the animals. Their volunteer programme has been a tremendous help to the organisation, helping to maintain regular operations and enabling the Farm to do major improvement works which would otherwise not have been financially or practically viable.

12 Days of Christmas

With our 12 Days of Christmas fundraiser, every day from the start of Advent every employee who made a donation to Save the Children was entered into a daily raffle and had the chance to win £250, or local equivalent if based in Germany or the US, to give away to the charity of their choice. On the 12th day, the winner won £2,000 to donate to charity. The Giving campaign itself raised £4,032 for Save the Children.

Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday is the biggest day of global generosity; a day when people all around the world spread awareness of, volunteer for and support the causes they love. In 2021 this took place on the 30th of November and Hg helped raise £10,922 through our Hg Giving platform on the day.