The Softcat News Team
Last night saw Softcat host their annual Charity May Ball, where they welcomed 900 guests from the IT industry, raising over £330,000 through ticket sales, a raffle, charitable donations and a silent auction. This is the ninth Charity May Ball and sets the record for the highest amount raised yet.
The money raised from this charitable event will be split amongst our nominated charities including the most recent additions, the mental health charity, Mind, whose aim is to ensure everyone experiencing a mental health problem gets support and respect, and the Bethesda-Khankho Foundation who support and work with the disadvantaged tribal communities in North-Eastern India, particularly in the state of Manipur.
Michael Walker, Head of the Charity Team at Softcat commented, “With nearly 500 tickets purchased from 79 different suppliers and technology partners I knew our 400 staff attendees were set for a special evening.
The Softcat Charity May Ball is more than just a fundraising event, it’s an opportunity to engage with our key partners, our valued staff and their spouse/partner as well.
I’m delighted that we have a record-breaking fundraising year to donate to our nominated charities knowing that this will simply be life changing for many people. The endless generosity of our staff and partners is exceptional and I’m grateful for everyone that attended”.
The night, organised and hosted by Softcat staff, included some evening entertainment, supported by top industry talent such as comedian Josh Widdicombe, performers FlameOz, and music from party band, The Tzars.
Graeme Watt, CEO at Softcat, said, “Our May Ball is a fantastic opportunity to raise money for some very worthy causes and has become a landmark event in the annual calendar for the UK IT industry. I would like to say a huge thank you to all those who attended from our vendors, distributors partners and the Softcat team. The generosity and support shown will make a very real difference in people’s lives, and we are so grateful to those who have contributed.”
Lucky raffle and auction winners walked off with a range of prizes including tickets to the British Formula 1 Grand Prix and a holiday to private island in Indonesia.
Our premium and most valued sponsors on the night were HPE, HP Inc, Commvault, Dell EMC, and VMware.
We’d like to say a big thank you to our Gold tier partners for the event who were LGE, Crowdstrike, Northamber, Logitech, Tableau, Apple, and Veritas.
We also had a number of generous Silver tier partners who were Mimecast, ArrowECS, CMS, Forcepoint & E92, APC, Cisco, Check Point, Iiyama & Midwich, VEEAM, Palo Alto, Exclusive Networks, and Riverbed.
And finally, a huge thank you to Lenovo also for sponsoring our photobooth.