Care2Save is the brainchild of Andrea Ladeira, the chief executive of Care2Save and the director of business and support services at St Luke’s Hospice in Cheshire. She says, unashamedly, that Care2Save “will change the world in the next two years.”
“If we can take a proportion of the money that churns around in corporate land and deliver it into the charity sector, the implications of that are huge,” she tells ehospice, with a look of determination in her eye.
Care2Save works by receiving commission from their products and service partners. Care2Save customers who purchase products and services via the Care2Save portal, will be donating 100% of the commission to charity.
80% of the commission will go directly to the customer’s charity of choice and the remaining 20% will go to the Care2Save Charitable Trust, to support palliative care services globally. The cost to the client is nothing.
The scheme is as ambitious as its founder. Care2Save states it “will transform the UK charity sector by establishing an unprecedented multi-million pound source of funds.”
The registered charity launched in April this year with its first product: home insurance. The insurance policy is one that was already in existence, provided by Reach Financial Services, and it is now sold through Care2Save.
Peter Lewis, the sales and marketing director for Care2Save, tells ehospice that anyone is eligible to apply for the insurance policy: “There are some provisos around buy-to-lets, but the vast majority of people are eligible.”
The policy claims to be competitively priced and despite being in its infancy, the feedback from Care2Save customers has been positive.
Lynne Prescott is a long-term volunteer at St Luke’s Hospice in Cheshire and heard about the scheme when the fundraising team held a meeting to raise awareness about Care2Save.
She said: “I thought it was the ideal opportunity to make sure the charity of my choice would get the money and not the middle man. The money could go to a good cause instead, so for me it was the perfect opportunity.”
Lynne made a saving of £30 per month and so for her there was no question of whether to take up the policy through Care2Save. But she was also impressed with the service:
“It didn’t take long, much easier than previous companies I’ve used. They were very pleasant on the phone and I spoke to a real person, not a machine.”
For each sale of the home insurance policy through Care2Save, the average commission being given to charities is £30. This commission will double in the second year if a customer renews the policy and will remain at the higher rate for the duration of the insurance policy.
There are other similar schemes already in existence, but Care2Save has some notable differences:
- Care2Save is a UK registered charity with very low running costs.
- The service will give 100% of the commission to charity.
- A portion of the commission will always be distributed directly to fund palliative care organisations.
It is worth noting that the staffing costs, however low, would currently have to come from the 20% of commission that goes back to the Care2Save Charitable Trust. But Peter is keen to emphasise that they are in the process of looking for core funding which could cover those expenditures.
“The aim is, really, as soon as possible to get to the stage when we can say hand on heart, we give everything away. And all the costs are covered by outside funding,” he says.
Peter anticipates only requiring seven staff in total, including Andrea and himself. The process is less labour intensive due to the partner organisations doing most of the leg work. Care2Save simply need to refer customers.
He tells ehospice: “Any partners that we work with going forward, they will do all the ground work. For the current insurance product: they employ the staff, they do the quotes, they run the call centres, they do the paperwork, they administer the insurance, they deal with the claims.”
It does beg the question: why wouldn’t you use Care2Save? And for the sceptic: what’s the catch?
Andrea tells ehospice that this scepticism has been the main challenge to overcome: “People think it’s too good to be true,” she laughs.
“But actually, when you talk to people who really love charities and support charities, they absolutely get it and they want to support it.”
She says she is often asked: “What does St Luke’s get out of it?”
And unless they work hard to encourage their supporters to buy products through Care2Save, the answer is nothing.
“Getting people to understand that what’s in it for St Luke’s is that they think it’s the right thing to do is hard,” Andrea says.
Andrea spent 18 years working in the corporate world with big multinational companies such as Glaxo Smith Kline, Axa and Royal and Sun Alliance.
Following her move into the hospice movement, she was determined to transfer the marketing methods she had utilised so successfully within businesses, into palliative care.
Andrea began looking at the charity sector through her corporate eyes: “How do commercial companies make money? What are they doing that we could emulate?”
She has since taken hold of the innovative reins at St Luke’s and launched a Bentley Bus, which can transform into a ladies clothes shop or Santa’s grotto at Christmas. And her latest venture, Swirly Whirlys, a coffee shop and creperie in Nantwich, in Cheshire.
But it’s clear that her main focus in any new fundraising initiative is longevity, with less reliance on legacies and large donors, because “it just won’t last,” she tells ehospice.
The scheme, although initially set up just to raise funds for St Luke’s, has the potential to become widespread on a national, or even international, scale. “It was only as things progressed that it became evident that it could be much, much bigger than that and it developed into what is now Care2Save,” says Andrea.
So how can hospices make Care2Save work for them?
Peter says that hospices can take an active or a passive role, but either way they will potentially receive some money: “If supporters choose their hospice as their charity of choice when purchasing a product through Care2Save, the hospice will receive the 80% commission.”
“Some hospices have become staunch supporters of the scheme. They’ve got people they have appointed to run programmes to encourage the uptake of home insurance through Care2Save,” he added.
Andrea has high hopes for fundraising through Care2Save at St Luke’s:
“My anticipation for St Luke’s is that in five years time, it will generate at least as much as our lottery does now in total, which is £650,000 of income, for patient care,” she says.
But how will Care2Save Charitable Trust distribute their portion of the commission to palliative care services across the UK and internationally?
The trust will have both a UK and an international expert advisory panel to provide guidance on how to spend the funds. The experts will all be working in palliative care or involved with the hospice movement in some way.
Andrea says that they would like to work with a small number of organisations who could then distribute the money on: “We’re looking at the moment about who has the infrastructure and who are the right organisations to be giving that money to.”
It is expected that Care2Save grants could be applied for by palliative care organisations from 2014.
With 60 high street brands who have expressed an interest in partnering with Care2Save, including well known names such as Boots, Expedia, The Trainline, Waitrose and BT, the potential of Care2Save is undeniable.
Andrea aspires to become, “the charity version of amazon” and shrewdly tells ehospice: “Anybody who has a product or a service to sell would be wise to speak to us. As long as their product already has affiliates, there is no reason why we can’t be one.”
Visit the Care2Save website to see an animation explaining the Care2Save concept or contact Peter Lewis the Care2Save sales and marketing director: peter.lewis@care2save.co.uk
Read a separate article in the International edition of ehospice to find out more about how the initiative aims to support palliative care internationally.
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