19 June 2023

Community groups, schools and businesses in and around Banbury are being invited to battle it out for the coveted Katharine House Accumulator Challenge, which was relaunched this week.

The popular Accumulator Challenge, originally organised by Karcher, raised over £93,000 for Katharine House between 2014 and 2020. This year, the campaign is sponsored by the Banbury Chamber of Commerce and run by the fundraising team at the hospice who hope to make it bigger and better than ever.

Local businesses, schools and community groups are being urged to sign up now and put their entrepreneurial and fundraising skills to the test.

Each team will be provided with £50 on 16 October to kickstart their fundraising and they will then have four months to raise as much money as they can, in exciting and creative ways. The campaign will end with an awards ceremony in the spring of 2024 to celebrate everyone involved, plus awards will be given to the teams to celebrate their success.

Graf UK are looking forward to taking part again this year, having used some very creative techniques in 2019–20 to raise nearly £7,500.

To kick off the challenge and raise initial funds, the team held a pub quiz for the staff, family and friends as well as a German Christmas Market at one of their Banbury office. The proceeds from these gave the team enough funds to launch he Great Graf Expedition, which saw two employees buy a 1994 VW golf and travel to every GRAF location in Europe (eight in total), fundraising along the way.

Callum Vance-Poole from Graf UK was heavily involved in all aspects of the challenge and said: "The best thing about the Accumulator Challenge is allowing people to think of creative ways to raise money for Katharine House. We could have done easy events or common fundraising activities but we had the freedom to think differently and came up with the expedition and the Christmas market.

"The Accumulator Challenge is a great way to bring your team together and unite the whole business, whilst doing a great thing for a great local charity."

Spaces are limited to 20, so organisations are urged to sign up now.

Click here to find out more