Stand Up to Cancer raises £7.1m for research

Fundraising | Niki May Young | 29 Oct 2012

The first Stand Up to Cancer fundraiser event in the UK has raised over £7.1m for Cancer Research UK.

A live star-studded televised fundraiser hosted by Davina McCall on 19 October on Channel 4 generated the interest of an average 1.7 million viewers throughout the four and a half hour slot and received 400,000 donations.

Still collecting donations up to 20 November, the campaign has so far totalled £7,152,386.

Stand Up to Cancer was founded in the US in May 2008 and has since granted over $109m to research teams. It launched in the UK earlier this year and has garnered the support of a number of high profile corporate partners including Tesco, BT and TK Maxx, offering both pro bono and financial support. The main event featured a who's who of British celebrities including Jimmy Carr, Derren Brown, Kylie Minogue, Heidi Klum, Leona Lewis, Cheryl Cole and Jonathan Ross.

300 ScottishPower employees, 850 Barclays staff and 187 AXA personnel gave up their time to man the phones on the night with telephone support offered by BT. Over 30,000 calls were taken throughout the evening. BT also provided its online MyDonate service for Telethons and Appeals, taking £700,000 in donations through the service.

The campaign saw exceptional social media success with over 265,000 tweets with the #standuptocancer hashtag on the evening. AXA also pledged £20,000 in return for 10,000 retweets of its 'little big things' tweet. And the Stand Up to Cancer Facebook page now has over 400,000 fans.

Lead sponsors Tesco held a Guiness World Record attempt for the most people standing on one leg simultaneously led by Britain's Got Talent stars Flawless. And TK Maxx sold over 50,000 wristbands.

The funding generated throughout the campaign will go towards transitioning breakthroughs in the laboratories into real services in hospitals. This year's funding will fund clinical research at hospitals and universities throughout the UK.

Directory: Cancer Research UK

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