Encouraging prospects at a difficult time

Pepper’s new Fundraising Coordinator

Pepper Announces New Patron

New Trustee Appointments

Bon Voyage to Nick Potts

Encouraging prospects at a difficult time

The Pepper Foundation AGM for the financial year ending 31st March 2008 was held at the Berkhamsted School on March 11th attracting a strong Pepper membership. Several members of the IRHH management team including Chairman Steve Cuthbert and Robert Breakwell the newly appointed CEO also attended throwing their weight behind this important review of the charity’s annual activities.

Jonathan Tweed, Chairman of the Pepper Foundation, reported on the performance of the charity against its targets and the expectations for the future. Because of the diversity of fundraising and the support the charity gets from many different events, individuals and volunteers, the last few months have seen the charity develop a strong financial position, enabling a 3 year commitment to be made to the Iain Rennie Hospice at Home for the funding of the Pepper Nursing Service.

Great progress has been made with events that Pepper organise themselves such as the annual Summer Show, the Opera and the Quiz, but also with events organised by others on behalf of the charity – The Pepper Golf Day and the Berkhamsted Rotary Half Marathon are two good examples. Our fundraising picture is completed by many ongoing sponsorships, donations, charity of the year etc, making for a good balanced picture in the future.

Pepper will also reap the benefits of using the professional expertise of the IRHH facilities, coordinated by Joanne Neale who will be the main Pepper fundraising contact for the future.

While some organisational realignment has also been made within Pepper, the most significant change for the new financial year is that the Foundation will have Co-Chairmen – Jonathan Tweed and Tony Hill, who together, will share leadership responsibilities for the charity.

Although they will work together on all the big issues, Jonathan will concentrate on operations including IRHH liaison, and Tony will concentrate on strategy including a new schools project he has initiated and is developing.

While the primary focus of the meeting concentrated on the formal proceedings which included the excellent ongoing financial performance of the charity, plans for the Pepper Nursing Team were also outlined by Sonya O’Leary the Pepper Nursing Team Leader, and Karen Neill, the Pepper Children’s Support Facilitator, who gave excellent presentations on the work of the nurses and the family support team.

This was accompanied by a moving account of the day in the life of a patient and family with specific examples highlighting the complexity of and sensitivity required for bereavement counselling for children.

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Pepper’s new Fundraising Coordinator

Joanne Neale
Joanne Neale has been appointed the new Pepper Fundraising Coordinator, having taken over responsibilities previously held by Liz Clarke.

Joanne has worked for The Iain Rennie Hospice at Home since April 2008 as a Community Fundraiser and in that time she has built up a firm knowledge of fundraising techniques and events management. 

In her role she has particular responsibility for sponsored events including organising the London Marathon team, arranging parachute jumps, overseas treks and supporting anyone who wishes to raise money for the charity through a specific sponsored activity.  She also managed a major event in November 2008 called the ‘Santa Dash’, which saw 300 people take part in a sponsored run whilst dressed up as Santa, which she proclaimed was excellent fun! 

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Pepper Announces New Patron

Dennis Fairey
We are delighted to announce that Dennis Fairey has accepted an offer from the Trustees to become a patron of the Pepper Foundation. Dennis continues to be the " communications guru" for the charity, having spent several years providing creative design and printing expertise and as well as a Pepper Trustee.

Dennis is responsible for updating the Pepper corporate identity into the much admired format we see today, and has championed the literature and website redesign. He is also responsible for editing our Pepper News newsletter and the monthly updates for our website - a right little clever ‘dick’.

Dennis' connections with local churches also introduced the "Pepper Praise" services slotting into one of the days during the summer show when we did not have a Sunday performance, raising a lot of money for the charity on what would otherwise have been a clear day.

Through his media and publishing connections, he also persuaded Jonathan Scott of the BBC Big Cat Diary fame to speak at the Berkhamsted Collegiate School Centenary Hall and was responsible for publishing and producing the Summer Show programme and all the marketing material for at least 5 years.

We are delighted to welcome Dennis to join our select band of patrons.

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New Trustee Appointments

Following the recent AGM, two new Pepper Trustees were appointed to the board to replace the vacancies left by Dave Soulsby and Dennis Fairey who retired in 2007 by rotation.

Tony Hill
Following a very enjoyable and varied career in IT, Tony took early retirement in 2006. In common with the role of his fellow Trustees, his prime objective now is to be given the opportunity of giving something back to the community. He was particularly impressed by the commitment and dedication shown by everyone involved with Pepper, who make an invaluable and much needed contribution to families touched by the serious
illness of a child. ‘By becoming a Trustee of The Pepper Foundation’ he says, ‘it will create the ideal opportunity for me to join a strong dedicated team and provide me with a very interesting and worthwhile challenge’.

Tony has been married for 28 years and has two children. His hobbies include long-distance running, crosswords, mathematics and philosophy.

Valerie Gunn
Valerie has been involved with Pepper in one way or another since the earliest days – even to the extent of actually appearing on stage on one memorable occasion! Valerie and her husband Richard have helped with and latterly run the annual raffle for more years than she cares to remember, and is proud of the contribution it makes to the annual
fundraising total.

She has also served as a Trustee of the Iain Rennie Hospice at Home for seven years, five of them as Chairman, and the children’s service was obviously an important part of her responsibility.

Valerie hopes that her broad knowledge and experience of Pepper and Iain Rennie will help her make a real contribution to the work of The Pepper Foundation in this next stage of the Foundation’s development.

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Pepper Announces New Patron

Trisha Buller
The Trustees of The Pepper Foundation have pleasure announcing that they have confirmed the appointment of Trisha Buller as a new Patron to the charity.

Trisha Buller has been a long term and enthusiastic supporter of Pepper for many years.

Together with her Ciente team, based in Berkhamsted High Street, Trisha has supervised and provided hair stylists and make-up services for all the cast of the Pepper Show for the last five years in addition to running special events such as a fashion show and supported other events that have made a real difference.

Trisha has also been a member of the Pepper Corporate Fundraising Team.

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Bon Voyage to Nick Potts

Many Pepper supporters and followers will be familiar with the name Nick Potts who, as one of the old stalwarts – or if you excuse the obvious pun, one of the original ‘Pepper Potts’ – devoted hours of his free time over the years to raise enormous amounts of money for the charity.

As well as being a Trustee of the Foundation for a number of years and a director of Pepper Events Limited (PEL), since it was formed in 1997, Nick worked as Deputy to Linda Horsfall who was Event Chair for three years.

Whilst running the Bookstack in Berkhamsted and Harpenden High Streets, he and his wife Dee, who sadly died a couple of years ago, did a fantastic job selling tickets for the Annual Summer Show and other Pepper fundraising events. They also organised the Friends pre-booking tickets for a number of years which, in addition to running their own business, took quite a lot of organisation.

Through his close association with the book publishing industry, Nick had access to quite a few ‘A’ list celebrities, therefore raised an enormous amount of money by holding events such as an evening with Cricket Umpire – Dickie Bird, the actor David Suchet, Terry Waite and John Simpson, plus a concert with the tribute band – The Commitments. He was also instrumental in organising the Berkhamsted Half Marathon and 5 mile Fun Run for some time during his association with Berkhamsted Rotary Club resulting in serious money being donated to Pepper and other local charities.

More recently, he hit upon the idea of holding charity lunches and dinners at the Gatsby Piano Restaurant and Bar in Berkhamsted High Street which proved an enormous success.

All the team at Pepper wish him well as he moves out of town to take up residence as 'Lord of the Manor' in his new home in Suffolk which we understand is more of a country estate than a two up and two down!

Thank you Nick for all your invaluable hard work over the years, which has enabled Pepper to grow from strength to strength to celebrate its 20th Anniversary this year.

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