The Family Business Network have recently undertaken a volunteering project for local suicide prevention charity, Action for Wellbeing.

By volunteering their time and skills, a team from The Family Business Network coordinated and delivered a project to provide support to the charity in the form of a new website, social media advice, a promotional film piece and broader marketing awareness work.

The project was initiated shortly after lockdown was announced, when colleagues from The Family Business Network arranged an online meeting to discuss how they could pool their skills and knowledge to help a worthy cause during the Covid-19 pandemic. Aware that the pandemic would present huge fundraising and volunteering challenges for charities, the team set out to identify a suitable local charitable cause that could benefit from their range of skills and knowledge.

Sue Howorth, of The Family Business Network said, “We identified a number of local charities that we could potentially support, but decided upon Action for Wellbeing as a charity both close to home and close to the hearts of several of our team. We contacted the director of the charity, Fredrika Buchanan who explained what help and support she was looking for. During a series of online meetings, we were able to work with Freddie to create a project brief and establish roles and requirements.”

Action for Wellbeing was formed in late 2017 with an aim to reduce the number of suicides in South Cumbria and North Lancashire by providing support to those considering suicide and those bereaved or impacted by suicide.

Charity Founder and Director, Freddie Buchanan (pictured) said, “Following the death of a dear friend of mine, I wanted to do something to help others affected by suicide and so founded Action for Wellbeing. Alongside a dedicated group of volunteers and with the help of financial support from donors and a grant from The National Lottery, we are able to offer long term, one to one telephone support, advice and advocacy to individuals over the age of 18 who live in South Cumbria or North Lancashire.

Freddie added, “I am incredibly proud of the work we do and was delighted to receive the offer of support from the team at The Family Business Network to help us with our marketing and communications.  Through them, we were able to launch a new, easy to navigate website featuring a wonderfully produced video and access great marketing support and advice”.

Over a period of three months, the whole team volunteered in excess of 100 hours of their time to the project, which was tracked and managed through the Investors in Community platform.

Dave Clarkson, of The Family Business Network said, “We work closely with Investors in Community through the network, to highlight to our wider family business community the ways in which the platform can help to manage their corporate social responsibility activities.

“With this knowledge, one of the first things we did was to add Action for Wellbeing onto the Investors in Community platform, to introduce the charity to a wider audience and enable our team to set out the project and engage with it as individuals as well as an organisation”.

Since the project began, the team have worked together and brought in specialist expertise to deliver a new website, produce a promotional film and provide brand awareness, social media support and one to one mentoring and advice.

The new Action for Wellbeing website, built by Helen Dowthwaite of Creative Essence can be found here featuring a fresh new design and simple navigation menu, along with a new private resources facility for volunteers to access.

The website also features a short film, shot in Arnside where the charity is based, and was produced by FamBiz Media film director Sheenah Alcock.  It features Freddie, the charity’s founder, and also a song written by her and featuring her fiancé Robin on guitar. The track “There” highlights why the charity was originally created.  Freddie and Robin work together professionally as the musical duo ‘Me & Fred’.

For more information on the work of Action for Wellbeing, how you can get involved, volunteer or donate, please visit their website

For more information on the Family Business Network, click here

For more information on Me & Fred, please click here