The Light Fund opens for applications – charities have until 8 Nov to apply for funding
Thanks to the generosity of The Henries attendees over £6,500 has been raised for The Light Fund industrywide charity.
Add to that another £8,000-plus raised by Products Of Change and Fuggler at Brand Licensing Europe as well as from the raffle at the Excellence In Housewares Awards over the last couple of weeks, plus the funds raised at The Retas, The Licensing Awards, The Gift Awards and other events, and the charity’s 2024 coffers are filling up nicely for its 20th anniversary year.
The Light Fund is now open for 2024 applications from any UK-registered charity organisations which help children, women or men.
“It’s truly wonderful that, thanks to the support from the greeting card community each and every year, through The Light Fund we have been able to change the lives of thousands of people all over the world, less fortunate than ourselves,” Jakki Brown, md of Max Publishing and one of the co-founders of The Light Fund, commented.
“I urge everyone in the greeting card industry to get in touch with charities close to their heart and encourage them to submit an application for funding. It really is quick and easy to apply.”
There was special poignancy about the raffle at The Henries this year as Toni Cresswell, a longtime member of the Emotional Rescue team, very sadly died of pancreatic cancer a few weeks ago so half the funds from The Henries raffle are to be donated to Pancreatic Cancer UK in tribute.
Announcing the raffle with co-director Ian Hyder, which can be seen in the video below, Jakki added: “Toni loved The Henries and was pleased to learn, shortly before she passed that we would be raising money for the Pancreatic Cancer charity which is also to be the charity beneficiary for next year’s Cardgains Charity Challenge.”
Among those who donated some amazing prizes for The Henries raffle were Alpha Colour Printers, Cardzone, Carte Blanche Greetings, Emotional Rescue, Enveco, The Imaging Centre, Loxleys, Paper Salad, The Sherwood Group, Simon Elvin, and Woodmansterne.
The Light Fund welcomes any charity with a UK-registered charity number which works to benefit men, women or children in Britain or overseas to submit proposals for specific projects that will be completed during 2025, costing up to £5,000, that they would like to be considered for funding – all applications must be made online here, and should be received by no later than Friday, 8 November.
The Light Fund chairman Trevor Jones said: “The application portal on the website is now open – we’ve had lots of applications so far, but continue to spread the news far and wide.
“We have four protected charities this year that we’ve guaranteed a donation of £5,000 each to, they are New Life, CALM, ShelterBox and Maggie’s.”
All submissions will be considered by The Light Fund trustees and committee members, who individually vote for the projects they would most like to see funded. These votes are then correlated, with the projects getting the highest number of votes receiving the go ahead.
Charities will be informed in December if they have been successful and the project details will be featured on The Light Fund website under the Beneficiaries tab.
Since its inception in 2004, The Light Fund has now raised well over £2.3million and funded more than 250 different charity projects for registered charities including numerous smaller local charities.
