Hallam’s landmark digital conference puts a new roof over the Nottingham Samaritans’ heads

The Nottingham Digital Summit saw more than 750 professionals in the marketing, creative and technical sectors gather for a world-class conference, and in the process raise over £20,000 for the Nottingham branch of The Samaritans.

The conference was organised by Hallam as a fundraiser for their charity of the year, The Samaritans.

The funds will be used by The Samaritans to replace the leaky roof at the Nottingham Samaritans’ office in Clarendon Street and also towards supporting their outreach work.

Chris Shilling, Deputy Director of the Nottingham Samaritans, said: ”I want to thank the team at Hallam for organising the Summit, and facilitating one of the single largest donations to the Nottingham branch of The Samaritans. Quite literally, we will be using the money to replace the roof over our heads. We are hugely grateful to every delegate who made a donation. These funds are vital for us being available when people need us.”

The Summit is the largest digital event in the Midlands. 31 expert speakers donated their time and expertise not only to power up Nottingham’s digital marketing community, but to also give full support to the fund-raising initiative. Leading digital marketers from Jaguar Land Rover, Saint Gobain, Google, Experian, Virgin Media, Boots and Adobe took the stage and shared best practice tips and techniques for marketing in a digital world.

Susan Hallam, CEO of Hallam and the organiser of the Summit, said: “Hallam is committed to demonstrating Nottingham as one of the UK’s leading creative cities and I think the Summit did just that. We’re proud to have brought together the brightest minds in digital, creative and tech for such a great cause as the Samaritans. Thanks to all the speakers, sponsors, delegates and volunteers for creating such a successful event.

“Last year we raised £15,000 for Nottingham’s leading homelessness charity, Framework. And we invite local charities to get in touch to be considered as Hallam’s charity of the year for 2020.

However, the Summit isn’t the only way Hallam offers a helping hand to this fantastic cause. Hallam’s experts are donating some of their time to raising the online profile of the charity who previously had none. Our first port of call was creating a Facebook page from scratch as 91% of charities are using Facebook to help them achieve their objectives. Therefore it was the primary goal, allowing the charity to have an online hub to post and engage with both volunteers and members of the public. Over 100 people joined the page ‘Friends of the Nottingham Samaritans’ in the first week. The next steps are to hopefully build Nottingham Samaritans their own landing page independent of the national Samaritans website.

The Nottingham Digital Summit was kindly sponsored by Adzooma, AirBI, Contrast, Distinction, Google, Harper Recruitment, John E Wright, Mirra Mirra, Nottingham Trent University, Photozest, Pinfold Promotions, Ryley wealth management, Shakespeare Martineau and the University of Nottingham.

The Summit will be back in 2020 on 23rd June.