Looking back at 2023…. Lots to celebrate!

It's hard to believe how far we've come and how much we've achieved in the last 12 months. There are some obvious highlights - THE BOOK, Alison's London marathon, going on ITV's Lorraine, The Guardian interview, on-boarding eight new hospitals and cancer centres to distribute our letters...

Together we've sent over 10,000 letters out - helping to tackle the isolation and loneliness people facing cancer can experience. And for that, we'll always be grateful for the opportunities that 2023 brought our way to help us achieve this. 

But in a charity as small as ours, it's all the little things that add up and absolutely deserve a mention too. Take a peak below at what we’ve crammed into the last 12 months.

We started the year by securing finance to bring onboard Charity Manager, Harriet, to run FMTY and help us expand our charity. 

Supporter - and now Trustee - Nicholas Lee kicked off his 1,000 mile fundraising walk for us after losing a friend to cancer and being a big believer in the power of a letter. 

Then it went book crazy with the launch of From Me, To You and the amazing media coverage that followed including ITV's Lorraine, Radio 5 Live, a double page spread in the Daily Express and multiple local radio interviews.

We launched our Donate A Book campaign to raise funds to send our books out to cancer centres, hospitals, libraries and individuals who could benefit from reading it. 

We topped it off with a spring in our (well, Co-Founder Alison's!) step as she completed the infamous London Marathon for our Donate A Book campaign - smashing her fundraising target! 

Summer got off to an amazing start with Alison's 'A moment that changed me'  interview being published in the Guardian at the start of May. This saw a huge surge in letter recipients and donors coming forward. 

We launched a competition to design a bookmark and were inundated with entries, showing our supporters' artistic flair and creativity. 

People gave up an ice-cream for us with our Donate An Ice-cream fundraiser - ensuring we could buy stamps to send letters out through the summer. 

We welcomed three new hospitals onboard to distribute our letters to their patients; The Royal Marsden, Stoke Mandeville and High Wycombe. 

Our Peterborough Hub swung into action, gathering local supporters together for a workshop and plastering the area with posters and flyers. 

And our Community Ambassador, Caroline from the Kitsch Hen, took to a unicycle in a crazy fundraiser for us - making the front page of her local paper!

Our Big Letter Write campaign dominated the Autumn - bringing in bags full of letters to our PO Box, helping us to meet the 25% increase in demand we were seeing. 

Our Volunteer, Patricia, who sends out our Donate A Letter packs to supporters, took on the challenge of walking the Camino De Santiago to raise funds for our work - generating over £2,000 for our work. 

Supporter - and now Trustee - Lucy Hind hosted a tea and cake fundraiser at her home, raising £500!

Yours magazine published an interview with Co-Founder Alison - spreading awareness of our work and bringing people to us.

We started working with two hospitals in Nottingham, providing their patients with our letters. Feedback from staff and patients has been wonderful from these outlets.

We finished off by hosting a corporate workshop at Expedia, generating masses of letters for us from their staff. A huge - and much-needed - boost to our postbag.

We ended the year on a high. We met with Rebecca and Karl from Wildflower Illustrations about working together, gained Marina from Marina B Designs as a Community Ambassador and brought on two new Trustees, Nicholas Lee and Lucy Hind. 

7,500 of our bookmarks from the competition earlier in the year (along with flyers and posters too) were distributed across the UK by a team of our wonderful supporters. 

Our Christmas Card Campaign brought a record 3,000 of donated cards and letters to us in time to distribute to hospitals and homes for Christmas. 

Our Christmas Stamp Appeal raised enough for us to send out every letter we received, which was fantastic. 

We started working with Churchill Hospital in Oxford and Whishton Hospital in Prescott - giving their patients our letters to enjoy. 

Three Apple stores chose us as their charity to volunteer for, with staff being given time to write letters for us. We received our first pack of letters just before Christmas. 

We were chosen as the charity to benefit from Fountain Pens UK annual Advent Auction  - raising an incredible £2,500 for our work. 

And to top off the year, supporter Liz O'Riordan mentioned us in her interview with Good Housekeeping magazine (published in Dec), bringing 150 new supporters to us...and rising! Amazing. 

Here's to 2024 - to opening our hearts, writing letters, bringing smiles and spreading kindness. Let's do this. And let’s do it together.