Charity Of The Year Selected For 2026 After Enthralling Race

Introduction

There are easier ways to pick a charity of the year. A vote in a meeting. A show of hands over coffee. A quiet decision made by the leadership team and announced in a newsletter.

We went with a relay race in 30 degree heat.

On Friday 31 July, everyone at our office swapped desks for the car park and the green space around it. Three teams, each led by a director, each running for a different local cause. Win the day, and your charity becomes the one CRE Group supports for the next twelve months.

The Shortlist

Three Selected Causes

Before any of the running happened, there was a decision about which charities deserved a place on the start line.

The Breck Foundation works to keep young people safe online. It was founded by Lorin LaFave after the murder of her fourteen year old son Breck, who was groomed online. The foundation now delivers online safety education to schools, parents and police forces across the country.

The Lucy Rayner Foundation supports young adults living with depression and anxiety. Set up by Lucy’s family in her memory, it funds counselling, runs support groups and works to remove the cost and waiting list barriers that stop young people getting help when they need it.

Air Ambulance Charity Kent Surrey Sussex brings the emergency department to the roadside. KSS crews fly and drive to the most critical incidents across all three counties, twenty four hours a day, every day of the year. Crawley sits squarely inside their patch.

Three very different organisations. Three causes that any of us would have been proud to spend a year supporting. Which is exactly what made the race worth running properly.

The Event

How It Went Down

The format was part relay, part obstacle course, part school sports day for grown ups. Each director picked a team, each team was given a colour, and the afternoon ran as a series of legs and challenges with time on the line at every stage.

Leg 1: Danny v Freddie v Ben

The lads who do the most by way of fitness kicked us off. Danny (Red) being the big-muscles-gym-lad, and Ben (Yellow) being the wiry-long-distance-runner. But in the end it was our not-quite-either Head of Marketing, Freddie, who got his team off to a raring start, clocking a sub 4-minute kilometre.

Leg 2: Alfie v Has v Jake

Despite a headstart and having the stride of an antelope (he’s 6 foot 9), Has fell back to Jake, who was round the course like a whippet. Alfie put in a great showing as he started last and has 20-40 years on these lads (hard to tell). Has brought it back with some sharp shooting to keep the blues in the lead.

Leg 3: Dan v Amy v Gemma

Amy took a commanding lead into the Fizzy Drink Stacking In Order Not Sure What To Call This Challenge Challenge. She had to try and recreate the order of the stacked cans, which were hidden behind a screen, and could only be told how many out of four were correct. She kept the blue lead intact, but Gemma was super speedy in her guess and Dan wasn’t too far behind.

Leg 4: Jayleigh v Sully v Grace

Sully either started showboating or showed a bizarre display of sportsmanship as he slowed right down to let Grace catch up (we think he was secretly out of breath), so it was neck-and-neck going into the stopwatch challenge. But Sully clawed it back with a quick stop. In the meantime, Jayleigh channelled her inner Usain Bolt and absolutely tore around the track to make some time up for the reds.

Leg 5: Calvin v Ryan v Elliot

It all comes down to this. CRE's founders ripped apart as competitors. Ryan set off first but Elliot was hot on his tail. Calvin a little way back, but running with good pace.

But it was Ryan who maintained his lead and entered the office first. All he had to do was hit a bullseye to take the win for the blues. One go led to two, three, twenty. Still no hit.

Elliot finished his kilometre and they started to throw alternating darts. Calvin followed very closely after.

It’s a three way shoot out.

Breathing hard, and not just from the 1km run. From the pressure mounting in the room.

Outer wires were hit. Choice words were shared.

And then someone hit bullseye…

RYAN WINS IT FOR THE BLUE TEAM.

KSS ARE OUR CHARITY PARTNER OF THE YEAR.

The Result

More Than £2,500, Split Three Ways

Here is the part we are proudest of. The relay decided which charity we would back for the year, but it did not decide who went home empty handed.

More than £2,500 was raised across the day, and it was split between all three charities. The Breck Foundation and The Lucy Rayner Foundation both received plenty of donations too, with money going straight into their fundraisers, and all three fundraising pages remain open for anyone who wants to add to the totals.

Our Charity of the Year

Who and Why KSS

KSS is not an NHS service. It is a registered charity funded almost entirely by donations from the public and from businesses in the three counties. No government funding keeps it in the air, with the service costing more than £45,000 a day to run, which works out at roughly £16 million a year, raised in fundraising pages, collection tins, lottery tickets, legacies and corporate partnerships like this one.

CRE sits inside the area KSS covers, and so do our people. Crawley, the surrounding towns, the roads our team drives every day and the roads our clients drive between viewings and valuations are all within the same thirty minute reach. The M23, the A23, the rural lanes across the Sussex and Surrey border - these are the places KSS is most often called to.

A charity partnership is one of the few commitments that pulls in the opposite direction, and it works best when the whole team has a stake in it rather than just being told about it. That is really what this relay was for. Nobody at CRE Group had KSS chosen for them. The office ran for it, cheered for it and decided it between them, in the heat, on a Friday afternoon. Twelve months of fundraising is a lot easier to sustain when it started that way.

Support the Cause

Donate

All three fundraising pages from the relay day are still open.

• Air Ambulance Charity Kent Surrey Sussex (our Charity of the Year): justgiving.com/page/cregroup
• The Breck Foundation: justgiving.com/page/cre-group-breckfoundation
• The Lucy Rayner Foundation: justgiving.com/page/cre-group-lucyrayner

Every pound raised for KSS goes towards the £45,000 it costs to keep the service flying for a single day. Follow the blog through the year to see where our total gets to, and thank you to everyone who ran, threw, cheered, sweated and gave on 31 July.