Petal driving away with £2,744 thanks to Hippo Motor Group

Customers of a fast-growing Blackburn motor group are playing their part in a worthy charity fundraiser; simply by driving their new car away.

Hippo Motor Group, also recognised as Hippo Leasing in Trident Park, pledged to donate to the local childhood cancer charity, Petal, for every vehicle sold and this week were delighted to present them with a cheque for £2,744.

Managing director, Tom Preston, said: “We make a conscious effort every year to select one, or numerous local, national and even international charities to support.

“As a local charity tirelessly raising funds specifically for research into childhood cancers for Cancer Research UK we felt Petal was an extremely worthy cause and every one of our team was behind our fundraising efforts.

“We feel proud to be able to hand over a cheque to Petal and we hope that all our customers also feel proud that they have played their part in collecting this figure.”

Karen Weaving, is the founder of Petal, currently in its 20th year of fundraising specifically for research into childhood cancers for CRUK. The total raised by the charity to date is approximately £1.4 million.

She said: “We were thrilled when Hippo announced that Petal was to be the benefactor of this recent charity idea. We are reliant on donations like this to carry out the work we do, so we want to say a huge thank you to everyone involved.”

“We started fundraising for research following the untimely death of a friend's 16-year-old son from Hodgkins Lymphoma, a childhood cancer than can now be cured if caught in time. We are now one of the most successful fundraisers for CRUK in the country, regularly in the top 5 committees and have won lots of awards from CRUK for our dedication and commitment to research into childhood cancers.”

Hippo has raised well over £50,000 for a variety of charitable causes since it was founded in 2007, through events such as balls, football tournaments, coffee mornings and comedy nights.

Tom said: “We are very lucky as a company to have been involved with so many worthwhile causes. It has allowed us to work become familiar with their incredible work and feel like we’ve made a difference once we have been able to reveal the fantastic amounts we have raised over the course of our 11 years in business.” If you know of a charity that would benefit from our support, please email [email protected] with details.