At one of our flagship fundraising events a few months ago, Heather and Andrew shared the story of Tom, their son who died three years previously, aged just 17 month, from the cruel and rare disease Krabbe.
When Tom received his diagnosis, the family was told there was no treatment available that could stop, or even slow down, the disease. Our event fell on the anniversary of them finding out he had just days left to live.
It was a poignant reminder to all of us at Sparks of why our fundraising and research are so important – and why we simply had to do more.
Sparks is a children’s medical research charity that has been funding innovative paediatric research since 1991. We help researchers, doctors and parents understand why children’s conditions happen and how we can treat or prevent them successfully. We have funded almost 300 groundbreaking research projects across the UK.
While we are proud of what we have achieved, we know there is still much to be done. In 2016, when we celebrated our 25th anniversary, we took a natural moment to pause and reflect. We talked to our supporters, looked at our operations and fundraising model and knew we could not achieve what we wanted to. We knew we had to make changes.
We have always put on successful events, which are a crucial part of how we raise our funds, but we thought there must be other ways to raise money to help us to fund research. The logical step for us was to work with an organisation skilled in raising money through a wide range of activities.
We approached Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh) children’s charity to explore this further – as a children’s charity with a strong reputation for funding national research, and a loved brand, it felt like a natural home for us. The Gosh charity considered the proposal, carried out due diligence and saw the potential for what we could achieve together.
On 1 February, Sparks will join the Gosh charity family, where we will work together to drive more funding into paediatric research to help find cures for children.
Sparks will join as a subsidiary, retaining its own external brand identity and charity number.
One in 30 children in the UK is born with a condition that may affect them for life and for whom research is their only hope. Despite this, research into diseases affecting children only receives 5% of public and charitable research funding each year: it is not enough. This partnership will give researchers the opportunity to apply for grants from a much larger pot, across the UK.
Our 10 staff will be based at the Gosh charity’s offices, working in an integrated team. It has been difficult and exciting to make changes to how an organisation is fundamentally run.
However, the ethos and values of Sparks remain. Partnering with another charity reflects a growing trend across the third sector, with charities with similar ambitions are coming together to maximise impact for their chosen causes. For us, it means we can continue to fund groundbreaking research to help families like Tom’s.
Elvira Morrison is acting chief executive of Sparks.
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