- Weston Park Hospital Cancer Charity’s office at Weston Park Hospital

- The reception desk of Sheffield Town Hall

- Aviva (PLEASE NOTE: This sale point is for Aviva staff only) – Please contact Kelly Pattison

*If you work for a large organisation and you are interested in becoming a representive for us (allowing your collegues to purchase books directly through you), please contact us through our contact us form.

We will have an interview with John and his team later on on the site.

The Charity Unleashed team

AUGUST 8 PAGE CHATBACK

So many thanks to everyone,

The Charity Unleashed team

Afternoon tea, is served between 2pm and 5:45pm, this is bracketed by their lunch time and supper servings and according to their reservation book, each day, each of their tables is full. The vast majority of these are Charity Unleashed voucher holders (we cannot take them all.) When we looked back over the book, they have always taken vouchers throughout the year but have also had plenty of spare space during the 11 months prior to this August.

What he asks though, is that people continue to try to book with them as they do get cancellations at the last minute, in line with that he has also asked that if you have a reservation that you cannot make, please call to cancel so that someone else can enjoy afternoon tea at the Leopold.

We have had feedback about problems people are having in using their vouchers from the first years book in the final month that they are valid,in particular there are a couple of locations that appear to be particularly popular.

What appears to have happened is that quite a lot of books (in the hundreds) were misplaced or filed for safe keeping for much of the 11 months that most of the vouchers were valid (after an initial use in the early months.) Unfortunately this has meant that quite a lot of businesses are literally overwhelmed with the number of people trying to use their vouchers before they run out. The number of vouchers were calculated on them being used throughout the year and so it is impossible for a business to cater for several hundred in one month. What this in turn means is that not everyone will be able to use their voucher before the end of the validity period.

We are working with those who are the most overwhelmed to try and ensure that they are using all their spare or available capacity where possible (they obviously need to keep some available for other clients)  to maximise the number of people who can use their vouchers in the time remaining.

Again, we have taken a learning from this and have put a reminder into the new book to nudge everyone to use their voichers throughout the year to ensure that they get the most benefit from them.

In addition, we also believe that what we want to achieve with the book is about charity and community, that for there to be a healthy community you need a strong charitable side and vice versa. So our ethos is very much to try and bring charity, community and local businesses together. We believe the best way to do this is by remaining as a business. However we have looked at becoming a charity and might do so in the future, though at this stage we do not have any plans to become one.

In general the fob is solid and looks good but has an unfortunate tendency to snap in the pocket. Why don’t we do something similar to super market fobs, where there is laminated Cardboard. We have tried this but our concern here is that after a few weeks in the pocket the fob starts to  come part with the laminate separating from the cardboard.

With all that in mind, we have contacted 2 different card manufacturers to see what their thoughts are and hope to have a good alternative to the original card.

And then there is the question of a £10.00 fob replacement fee. Aside from the usual admin costs associated with changing cards, updating systems and all that good stuff. This is here as part of our efforts to dissuade people from splitting the book up and selling individual vouchers on eBay. The book is sold as a whole to people and while we are all about sharing the fun with family and friends our agreement with the businesses is such that the vouchers should not be sold on eBay or other auction sites. No voucher is valid unless shown with a key fob (this is to help prevent fraud) and we have made this very clear to all the businesses involved.

Unfortunately people do still buy the book and resell the vouchers on eBay without a key fob. Which in turn means that anyone buying a voucher online runs the very real risk of not being able to use the voucher.

And so to help dissuade people from reselling vouchers we have quite a high new card fee. We also contact eBay and everyone who does sell the voucher online to ask them to remove the sale and point out that people will not be able to use the voucher without the associated key fob, so should not be selling the vouchers online.

The biggest problem we have had is that businesses have changed the terms on the voucher or have been unable to cope with demand or have gone bankrupt. We have tried, in the current book to put in place a few items that should address the first two items, the last one is one that is out of our hands, though here too we have put in place something that might help:

A. Terms changing on the voucher & unable to cope with demand (the first tends to lead to the latter)

– Businesses are only paid their share on redemption of the vouchers

– Other business terms have changed on our contract to help enforce our agreement

– Now that we have the redemption rates for different types of business, we are able to tell prospective partners the number of people to expect and we are much stricter on letting people through the door into the book. The aim of the book was always to work with local businesses over chains but unfortunately this can lead to small businesses being ‘emotionally and theoretically’ capable of dealing with demand but when the demand actually arrives not able to deal with it. With that in mind we have approached a wider range of businesses that can cope with demand more effectively than others.

–  Most importantly we have spent a significant amount of time with the businesses, going through their offers (we have rejected a lot of new offers this year) to discuss what makes sense for them as a business and what they can actually cope with. The aim of the book is very much a community project, one that raises money for charity, gives the consumer something and as importantly enables the businesses involved to showcase their products to people using the vouchers. With that in mind, we aim to ensure that what a business gives away, it really can afford to (either cost wise or time wise) and that they understand what is happening. While we did this the first time round, because it was a new concept, many people were unsure of the practical outcome of the project.

B. Bankruptcy & sale of a business

– This is obviously something we cannot control, however by paying business on redemption and amending our terms and conditions, we should (we hope) that we will be able to replace a business that ceases to trade with an alternative one because we still have funds available for them.

– Demand for space in the book is higher than we allow, so we will be carrying reserve businesses that might be interested in replacing others in the book if there is a problem for the first ones.

- Like last year, while the book is sold as containing £1,000 worth of experiences, the actual value of the book will be slightly higher.

However the bankruptcy of a business is out of our hands and is something that we would not wish on anyone, however if it happens or if a business is sold we hope that we can replace the voucher with an alternative and will work to but we cannot promise anything.

C. People feeling uncomfortable about using the vouchers.

– This is an unusual problem and one we have discussed with the businesses, that when people use a charity unleashed voucher, they should be made to feel very welcome. The irony of any business not making people feel welcome in this current recession is not lost on us. A Charity Unleashed voucher is rare (we are only printing 5,000 for a city of more than 500,000 people) and it is you that make it important, so please enjoy using them.

D. Businesses being abused

– This is really twofold and linked into the first couple of items that we have investigated. When a business is very busy and is unable to honour a voucher for a specific time or date; there have been instances where people have been upset and taken this out on the individuals within a business. This in turn makes it difficult for other voucher users and for the staff of the business involved. So please do complain when things go wrong but please do not abuse the businesses involved in the book, they are all of them giving away around £5,000,000 worth of product. And they are doing this for two reasons because they want to showcase their services and to have the chance to sell their incredible products to the community and as importantly to help raise money for 2 incredible local charities.

The end of this somewhat long news item….. What we wanted to say was that this is a learning for us and we are working hard to address everything we can so that our 2nd book is a great experience for everyone. So that all  involved we can still experience some of the best that Sheffield has to offer. If you want to contact us, don’t hesitate to use the contact us form on the site. We have (sometimes slowly) responded to everyone (I think) and are always happy to meet up.

Thanks again,

The Charity Unleashed Team

If you would like to sign up for the new book then please contact us using the contact us form. However, if you already own a book, then you should be (if we have your email) on our database and we will send out an email to you letting you know when the book is available.

And that brings me onto the new book, we should have it ready in the next few weeks, so keep an eye on the site……