RAISE 24

B4 has always had charity at heart, having organised and competed in bike rides from Paris and Edinburgh Castle to Blenheim Palace as well as numerous London Marathon appearances and Blenheim Triathlons.

RAISE is an altogether different in-person event which will be hosted by Keble College in central Oxford on Friday 13th December and led by B4. The primary aim of the event will be to recruit B4 members (and the wider business community) to participate in a charity ‘ring-a-thon’ during which they call their business contacts, suppliers and partners to make a donation to the central fund.

This event has the potential to be HUGE, and will be supporting some absolutely amazing local charities, who are all so important to our local community and need our support now more than ever.

Funds raised will be held by Oxfordshire Community Foundation (OCF), CIO no 1151621, in a dedicated B4 RAISE Fund, which will allow Gift Aid to be added where relevant. OCF will then distribute funds to the beneficiary charities as grants in 2025.

The ambition is for this to be an annual event, so hopefully with the support of the amazing B4 community and businesses beyond, we can all make this ambition become a reality.

B4 could have invited hundreds of charities to benefit, but have carefully selected ten as follows, with one more to be announced:

• Be Free Young Carers
• Connection Support
• Debra UK
• Homeless Oxfordshire
• Oxfordshire Community Foundation
• Oxfordshire Sexual Abuse and Rape Crisis Centre
• Oxfordshire Youth
• Pancreatic Cancer UK
• Plunkett UK
• Sobell House

So, how will it work?

A maximum of 75 teams each made up of four individuals will pledge to raise at least £500 per person, so £2,000 per team or a massive £150,000 in total. We’ll send you more details about the fundraising aspect once we have your confirmed team booked in.

Team & Individual Entry Tickets include:

The cost of entering a team for B4 Members is £450+VAT which includes breakfast, refreshments during the morning, pre-lunch drinks in the college bar and a three course Christmas Lunch for all four team members. The B4 Members’ teams can include colleagues or non-B4 Members. The rate for non-B4 Member teams (opening on 1st July) is £500+VAT so to qualify for the discounted rate your team must be entered by a B4 Member and your team must contain a B4 Member on the day.

Individuals can also enter, and we’ll put them together with other individuals to make up a full team – see Individual rate at £115+VAT for B4 Members and £125+VAT for non-B4 Members.

Teams will also be in competition for a number of awards, which will be handed out after the Christmas lunch!

Once you’re booked in you will be sent all the details you need with regards to the fundraising.

Team and individual costs do not contribute to the overall fund but will be used to cover the event costs on the day including refreshments and event production costs, the majority of which we are hoping to cover with sponsorship. Any surplus will be paid over to the RAISE fund.

What’s the format for the day?

We’ll begin the day with breakfast at 9am in the Great Hall at Keble, followed by a motivational speech at 9.30am to get teams in the mood to hit the phones and laptops to get their donations in, most of which should have been pre-pledged before the event. During the fundraising we’ve got lots of entertainment planned, and with everyone in Christmas themed outfits, it promises to be a glorious, colour-filled festive spectacular!

Before the Awards are handed out and the final grand total is announced, everyone will enjoy a pre-lunch drink in the college bar at 12pm before sitting down to a sumptuous three course Christmas lunch back in the Great Hall at 12.45pm. The event is scheduled to end around 3pm.

Get Involved

Book your Team of four or Individual place at the orange Select tickets link above.

Sponsorship Opportunities

If you would like to receive sponsorship details, please contact [email protected]

Strictly no refunds for this event.

Host

Keble College has come a long way since its opening in 1870. The first Oxford College of the modern era, it was founded in memory of John Keble (1792-1866), well known for his best-selling Christian verse and a key member of the so-called Oxford Movement which sought to recover the Catholic heritage of the Church of England.

The College’s aim was to make an Oxford education available to ‘gentlemen wishing to live economically’, not exactly an ‘access agenda’ as we would understand it today, but an early attempt to broaden the social depth of the student body. The College was originally strongly Anglican in its ethos. The striking polychromatic brickwork (the ‘holy zebra style’ as critics dubbed it), the hallmark of the architect William Butterfield, was intended to mark out the College as very different from its predecessors. It attracted funding from leading sympathisers of the Oxford Movement, including the Gibbs banking family, who made their money from a monopoly on imports of bird droppings (a valuable fertiliser) from the Galapagos Islands.

But the College’s agenda was not narrowly confessional. That was in large part due to its first Warden (the head of the College), the youthful Edward Talbot, who encouraged the teaching of science and had no problems with the theory of evolution. He was also a strong supporter of women’s education, and a leading light behind the foundation of Lady Margaret Hall.

Although Keble has produced many notable Anglican leaders, it is no longer formally tied to the Church of England. Originally dominated by those intending a career in the Church, it now admits students for the full range of academic subjects and they go on to just about every conceivable career. The College began to admit women in 1979; in 1994 it appointed its first female Warden, the distinguished historian of Byzantium, Dame Averil Cameron. Butterfield’s architecture has been supplemented by the equally bold buildings by Ahrends, Burton and Koralek, opened in 1979, and by a pair of Rick Mather designed buildings flanking Newman Quad opened in 1995 and 2002. Brick remains the dominant idiom, but glass is also used to striking effect.

Another major change has been the growing role of the postgraduate community. In 2004 the College acquired the site of the former Acland Hospital, just a few minutes walk from the main site. After a sustained fund raising campaign it opened The H B Allen Centre in 2018, another Mather designed building, providing 250 rooms for postgraduate students as well as new social facilities, and space for cutting edge research. We see it as an interdisciplinary community and as a space for intellectual innovation. We respect our past, but also seek to inspire the future.

Parking:

No on-site parking available. Parking spaces available in the surrounding roads.

Transport:

Please do contact Nick Breakspear from B4 Platinum Members Royal Cars at [email protected] to book transportation for this event if required. Nick will be pleased to assist with any requirements you may have for this event or your general private car needs.

Host or Publisher B4