Spotlight on one of our marvellous corporate partners

We sat down with Graham Jones, who outside his fulltime job as a Marketing IT Business Partner at Cytiva, heads up their charity network.

We’d like to introduce you to one of our corporate partners, Cytiva, a Danaher company and global life sciences leader. Cytiva helps enable its customers to advance therapeutics from pre-clinical research all the way through to commercial manufacture. The company has offices across the world including one right here in Amersham where we’re based. They have donated nearly £100k to the charity since their associates at their Amersham Place office started supporting us six years ago.

Why Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity? At Cytiva, we wanted to support a local charity whose purpose aligned with our vision of a world in which access to life-changing therapies transforms human health.  What surprised you most about the charity when you were first introduced? I married into a family of nurses (my wife, mother-in-law and sister-in-law!) so I'm well versed in how difficult and valuable a job it is. I’ve learned, though, a lot about the level of support children with complex medical conditions need since working with Roald Dahl's Marvellous Children's Charity. We all sensed quickly the lengths the charity goes to provide that support. But perhaps the biggest surprise was the way it benefits the whole family in so many ways, making their journey through healthcare less overwhelming and more manageable. And of course, that impacts the children they are caring for, too. The charity has benefited enormously from your support. But how has it positively impacted your team in turn? In so many ways. For instance, when we started our relationship with the charity in the middle of the pandemic, many of us were working remotely, not seeing colleagues outside digital meetings. We knew that was a challenge for many people – there are some 400 people based here normally – and we quickly realized this charity work was offering an opportunity to have real employee engagement outside the meetings and around something with a positive impact. And that has continued. Every event – be it a group of us joining a challenge event or organising a fundraising barbecue – is an opportunity for really enriching engagement across the site. Corporate social responsibility is now often part of a business strategy. Are those outcomes you talk about measurable? The engagement speaks for itself, but it has helped us see why volunteering is an important priority for staff. Associates at our Amersham Place site get three paid days a year to volunteer for a charity of their choice, and they all see that as a real benefit. We are seeing more and more people taking part in our charitable activities and colleagues from our other offices asking if they can take part in these team building opportunities when they visit. We broadcast news of what Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity are doing across the organisation, which has offices across the globe. And we have teams from across the globe reaching out to us to support the work, for example as part of their Christmas giving.

That’s amazing engagement. How do you achieve and maintain that at a time when other companies are reporting a drop in volunteering? Crucial to it is giving employees a real understanding of what the charity does. It’s easy for a nominated charity to become a tick box exercise, but this is anything but. That comes down to the way this relationship works and the bridges we’ve built over six years. It has allowed us to share in the charity's long term goals, and to see the difference our support is making. That is pretty wonderful. We feel we are part of the charity's journey. How does that work in practice? One example would be hospital visits. We have been invited to meet Roald Dahl Nurse Specialists and the families they care for, and we share that experience with colleagues across the company. It crystallizes the difference we are making. At the same time the charity team uses our offices for team meetings which has presented an opportunity for ‘coffee and cake’ mixers with the staff afterwards. And the charity team comes along to fundraising events we host so they can talk to our associates and answer questions. The charity is invested in us and what we are trying to do for them in a really special way. We are excited about all the opportunities to work with them coming down the road.

If you're interested in finding out more about ways to partner with Roald Dahl's Marvellous Children's Charity, please visit our corporate page today.