For the 11th straight year, William Blair teamed up with the Wrap Up London campaign to spread warmth across London during the 2021 holiday season by supporting the group’s annual coat drive.
More than 17,000 coats were collected during the 2021 campaign, which began in early November and ran through December. Coats were distributed to the homeless, refugee families, the elderly, those fleeing domestic violence, and others living in crisis through a network of over 100 London charities and community groups.
William Blair’s London team led the firm’s efforts. Instead of volunteering in-person at coat collection stations due to COVID, colleagues shifted their support by marketing the campaign via social media, donating their own coats, and coordinating the firm’s financial support of collection and drop-off points.
Since the campaign was launched in 2010, it has collected, sorted, and distributed almost 200,000 winter coats to some of the most vulnerable in the city. Even during the last two years of the COVID pandemic, Wrap Up London collected and distributed nearly 40,000 coats.
“None of this would have been possible without the support of William Blair,” said Jon Meech, chief executive officer of HandsOn London, the charity that organizes Wrap Up London. “The annual grant from William Blair ensures that we can maintain the capacity to serve this need, promote the campaign with branded materials, and cover the back office costs for the two and a half months needed to plan and deliver Wrap Up London.”
William Blair was the first financial sponsor of the event 11 years ago when 2,800 coats were delivered to London charities.
Over the years Wrap Up has extended outside of London to 23 other Wrap Ups in major towns and cities across the UK from Glasgow in Scotland, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, and Cardiff in Wales. Last year, Wrap Up also inspired similar collections in the Netherlands.