A NORTH East marketing agency are generously offering more than £25,000 worth of consultancy services for free to help support the region’s local air ambulance service.
Blumilk, a full-service creative consultancy based in Newcastle, have been providing support to the Great North Air Ambulance Service (GNAAS), who are one of the many charities that have suffered a loss in funds due to covid.
They first started working with GNAAS during the first half of 2020, after they launched the ‘Blumilk £50k North East Business Rebuild Fund’ to help businesses who were in financial difficulty during the pandemic.
Blumilk provided 60 hours of free work as part of the fund, which could be used towards marketing, design, business growth and strategy, employee communication or digital projects.
Lauren St Hilaire, Client Director at Blumilk, said: “From the first phone call with the team at GNAAS, we were absolutely captivated with the amazing work they do. We couldn’t get our heads around how such a vital part of saving lives was a charity and not part of NHS funding and we desperately wanted to do anything we could to support them.
“We knew the most valuable asset of all we could offer was the ability to spread the GNAAS message far and wide to help encourage as much support and as many donations as possible and therefore we set to work in helping to achieve that.”
After the initial offer of 60 hours, the company have agreed to provide an additional 260 hours this year, which works out at £25,600 worth of time.
Ms St Hilaire added: “We generally support a charity that is most close to our hearts per year and for as long as our business is thriving, we want the people who we know we can help to be thriving too. This is the largest time (equating to cash) donation we have given thus far and it’s all because we want to be proud to make a difference with the incredible team at GNAAS.”
GNAAS celebrates its 20th anniversary as a registered charity this year and during this time their team have provided pre-hospital care to more than 23,500 people across the region.
To mark the occasion Blumilk have been creating materials focused around the anniversary which GNAAS can use throughout the year, as well as working on several other projects with them.
Ashleigh Chapman, senior marketing manager from GNAAS, said: “The support we’ve received from Blumilk has been fantastic. We are incredibly grateful for their generous donation of time which has been used to help spread awareness of our cause and raise vital funds. It costs £6.7 million per year to keep the service running and it is support like this that helps make that possible. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed the projects we’ve worked on so far and look forward to our future work with Blumilk and the great team there.”
Ms St Hilaire added: “GNAAS are an exceptional organisation who are some of the most selfless and hardworking Blumilk have ever had the pleasure of working with. The services they offer within communities save lives every day and that is something you literally cannot put a price on. We love being part of the GNAAS journey.”
GNAAS is reliant on public donations and last year they responded to 1,620 incidents across the region. To find out more about how workplaces can support the charity visit www.gnaas.com or call 01325 487 263.
