Could you be a DKC Corporate Champion?
#DKC2026
Derby Kids’ Camp provides free holidays for over 300 of Derby’s most deserving young children every year.
Entirely staffed by over 200 volunteers, the charity makes a life-changing difference: helping build children’s confidence, independence and ambitions.
The memories of a Derby Kids’ Camp holiday last for a lifetime – so much so that many young children return as volunteers to ‘give back’ the experienced they received.
Could you become a Derby Kids’ Camp Corporate Champion and help us make this incredible difference for more young kids? Here are six ways to get involved…
1. Sponsor a child’s holiday
It costs just £245 to deliver an amazing holiday for a child who desperately needs a break.
We manage to keep the costs so low because the entire charity is fully staffed by volunteers – from our Summer Camp Volunteers through to the management team. That means every penny raised goes directly towards the costs of running holidays.
As part of their holiday, children get to experience the great outdoors, make new friends and enjoy a jam-packed timetable of activities.
2. Support employee volunteering on Derby Kids’ Camp
As a 100% volunteer-run charity, Derby Kids’ Camp relies on the generosity of our amazing volunteer team to provide the holidays!
Every year, over 200 Summer Camp Volunteers give a week of their time to run the camps – providing much-needed respite for local children and their families.
We have a number of Corporate Champions who support this through offering part or all of the week as volunteering leave, and/or by pulling together a small team to volunteer. Is this something you could do to help?
3. Participate in fundraising events and challenges
Whether you’ve got a sporty team – or a competitive streak running through the office! – you could channel it for good by joining in with one of our fundraising events or challenges.
Every year, we take part in a number of events during the Spring, including Derby 10k run, the SkegVegas 100 bike ride and – new for 2025 – the ‘Ashbourne Amble’ (a 20 mile walk from Derby to Ashbourne).
Getting a team from the office involved makes a fantastic difference in helping us to raise awareness of the charity – along with more much-needed funds which will go directly towards holidays.
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4. Adopt Derby Kids’ Camp as your Charity of the Year
Every year, we’re lucky to be ‘adopted’ as the Charity of the Year by a small number of organisations – whose staff and customers make a massive fundraising effort over 12 months to pay for a number of children’s holidays.
Our commitment to keeping staffing, administration and property costs to an absolute minimum (in most cases zero!) is seen as hugely important by our corporate supporters.
This means that they can be confident the money raised will go on to make a real difference to some of our county’s most deserving young children.
5. Bring a team to help us build the Derby Kids’ Camp site
One of the biggest challenges on our calendar is getting the Derby Kids’ Camp site built, ready for the children to arrive!
Throughout the year, our site is an empty field (cared for by a local farmer and his flock!). In late July, in a little over 48 hours, this empty field is turned into a fully-functioning canvas village – complete with more than a dozen marquees, kids’ tents, flooring, electricity, a fully-functioning kitchen and hot and cold running water!
We rely on the generous support of corporate teams who come to join us on Camp Build – for anything from a few hours to a few days! If you’re able to get a team together to help, we’d love to hear from you.
6. Raise awareness of Derby Kids’ Camp online and at work
We’re often called one of Derby’s ‘best-kept secrets’. We don’t have an office or staff – the charity is run alongside our volunteers’ full-time jobs, study, businesses and more.
This means it can be a challenge to get the word out there about what we do.
But in our 50-plus years, we’ve provided free holidays for over 16,000 of the city’s children – making a huge difference to thousands upon thousands of lives.
You could help us to raise awareness by sharing and engaging with our posts on social media, or by talking about the charity at work. We are often invited to give talks at local businesses and organisations and will always endeavor to find a volunteer who’s available to do so.
