Celebrating Macmillan Coffee Morning - where does the money go?

The first Macmillan Coffee Morning was held 32 years ago, back in 1990. It was simple concept: to gather people together to share a coffee, and donate the cost of their cup to Macmillan Cancer Support. It was a hit, and the next year we tried it again – this time on a national level. Since then, Coffee Morning has grown and changed, and altogether it has raised over £290 million for Macmillan Cancer Support.

This year, we had our first in-office Coffee Morning since 2019. It was lovely to gather, and it’s been years since we’ve seen the kitchen that busy!

The official figure is still growing as more Coffee Mornings are held, and more donations are made. But as of October 7^th, 2022, this event has raised £2,070,329. That’s an incredible amount – and we are still counting!

So, what does this money do? Here’s an idea of what donations raised can do to support people living with cancer:

• £2,070,329 could fund 33 Macmillan nurses for a year.
• £71 could help run Macmillan’s fabulous Online Community for over 3 hours – potentially supporting nearly 200 people affected by cancer in that time.
• £350 could fund a Macmillan grant – helping someone pay a bill, visit friends, or take a holiday with family (figure correct at time of publishing).

What about our cancer information resources?

Our range of booklets, Easy read titles, audiobooks, translations and British Sign Language (BSL) videos are all free to order, or download online. And your Coffee Morning donations go a long way!

• Just 37p could provide a parent or guardian with a copy of Preparing a child for loss – a booklet we produce in partnership with Winston’s Wish to help them navigate having those difficult conversations with a child.
• £4 could pay for over 10 copies of our Coping with fatigue booklet. This has been the second most-ordered resource from our range of over 180 booklets.
• £43 could pay for 50 copies of our Help with the cost of cancer booklet. This information could potentially help a person living with cancer understand the financial help they could access.
• £540 would pay for a British Sign Language signer to be added to one of our information videos. Click here to see our BSL enabled videos on Youtube.
• £767 could pay to make one of our most popular booklets, Help with the cost of cancer into an audiobook. This allows people to listen online, or download the audio files from our website.
• £846 could pay to create a translated factsheet, to provide cancer information to someone who's first language isn't English. These factsheets are available in 15 languages, as this year we expanded them to include Turkish, Ukrainian, Pashto, Dari and Farsi.

We are so grateful for the support of our volunteers and fundraisers, to enable us as a team to keep pushing to create content that people affected by cancer turn to. We want to keep being able to create accessible, reliable, and straight forward information in a range of formats – and by taking part in a Coffee Morning, you’re helping us in our mission! To find out more about Coffee Morning - visit the Macmillan website.