A team from Wilko has raised £50,000 for The Prince’s Trust youth charity as part of its nationwide Million Makers challenge.  

Million Makers is an entrepreneurial fundraising challenge that sees teams of employees from companies across the UK competing to raise at least £10,000 or more over a period of six months. Collectively, corporate teams from across the UK are aiming to raise £1,000,000 to transform the lives of disadvantaged young people around the country.

The challenge invites teams of employees from across the UK to devise a fundraising business initiative that they then pitch to a Dragon’s Den style panel of judges from The Prince’s Trust.

The selected teams are then given £1,500 seed funding and challenged to raise at least £10,000 within a six-month period.

Team ‘Aspire’ from Wilko head office devised an annual fundraising programme across 12 months in addition to designing and developing a branded Wilko re-usable bag to sell in all stores with all net proceeds going to the charity.

The team smashed their target of £10,000 by raising £50,000 helping 50 young people get a new start in life.

With this fantastic achievement, the team were crowned winners of the Yorkshire and Humber challenge and were invited to The Prince’s Trust Celebrate Success awards in London, attended by HRH The Prince of Wales.

The Wilko team were awarded the overall ‘National Teamwork’ title at the final for the Million Makers challenge alongside achieving third place out of 17 teams with the monies raised.

Wilko's family chair of charity committee Nick Wilkinson said, “We’re extremely proud of our team members for all the hard work they’ve put in to 'The Princes Trust – Million Makers Challenge.' Since the re-usable levy bag was introduced in England, we’ve been charging 5p per bag and the proceeds have been donated to charity. The Prince’s Trust is one of the benefiting charities - so far we’ve donated an incredible £221,000 to the trust since the levy was introduced in 2015; the Million Makers challenge was additional support to this.”  

Million Makers Challenge team member Jonathan Ball added: “As a team made up of 13 individuals, we held a series of brain storming sessions and created a shortlist of products we thought would have appeal. We then stress tested the shortlisted ideas to see which idea had the most appeal, shelf life and something we could start selling as soon as possible, the result ... the bag was born!  By the end of the challenge we managed to raise an amazing £50,000 which was generated from the bag sales as well as a variety of fundraising events.”