British Gypsum’s £100k in 100 Day Hero Exceeds Target

It takes a special kind of MD to inspire grown men to have their legs waxed, teams run marathons, customer service reps to bake hundreds of cupcakes and entire departments to dress up as cartoon characters, but this is exactly what British Gypsum’s Managing Director Mike Chaldecott has done for his 100k in 100 day challenge.

The campaign was devised by the leading plasterboard manufacturer’s MD after an anonymous donor challenged him to raise £80,000 in 100 days promising to add £20,000 to the total if the target is reached. “It was too good to turn down,” said Mike who chose to split the funds between CRASH, the construction and property industry’s charity for homeless people, and Macmillan Cancer Support.  Both charities are of particular importance to Mike – he is a patron and trustee of CRASH whilst Macmillan Cancer Support helped his father during the last weeks before he died of prostate cancer.

As front man of the campaign, Mike ran the Windsor Half Marathon joined by a strong team from British Gypsum and Saint-Gobain Isover. Just one week later Mike travelled across the English Channel to complete the famous 20km race in Paris. Despite it raining for the whole of the race Mike managed to finish in 1 hour 27 minutes overtaking 640 people to finish 76th out of 2286 runners in his category.

During his training for the two runs, Mike joined colleagues – and Barney the dog – when they took on The Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge whilst other members of British Gypsum workforce took part in the Crossdale cross-country trail event.

Sherburn Plant Manager Simon Tait raised over £105 when he had his legs waxed, Lucy Dixon and Karen Brenan set out to sell 100 cupcakes over two days at their plant and Customer Service Centre and British Gypsum’s resident netball superstar Fiona Hale took on her Netball Challenge to shoot as many hoops as possible in one hour, from two metres, into an official 10ft ring.

“Raising £100k in 100 days is a tough challenge and I wanted to play my part and contribute in some way. As netball is my passion it seemed like the perfect opportunity to combine what I love with raising money for two great charities” said Fiona.

She went on to score 842 goals out of 1128 attempts raising £323 in the process.