Consultants from PwC and Bluerock put in the hard yards for charity
Professional services firms PwC and BlueRock have been marching to cause of a variety of charities in recent weeks, literally walking tens of thousands of kilometres to raise money.
Every young business graduate knows that to be successful in consulting, they’ll have to put in the hard yards – but they probably wouldn’t be expecting a literal interpretation. Over the past six weeks, consultants from two professional services firms – PwC in Sydney and BlueRock out of Melbourne – have been hitting the pavement, collectively walking tens of thousands of kilometres to raise money for various charities.
The team from PwC has been participating in Wayside Chapel’s Long Walk Home campaign, which supports people experiencing homelessness (the firm has also been supporting initiatives to tackle homelessness through the PwC Foundation Trust). The concept is simple. In an average week, a person experiencing homelessness walks 28 kilometres to find shelter or receive assistance. Participants are encouraged to do the same out of solidarity.
So far, the initiative has raised over $1.1 million, with the PwC crew smashing their $20,000 donation target to contribute over $70,000 and sit atop of the ‘teams leaderboard’. The monies raised will go toward a variety of Wayside Chapel support programs, with the PwC team’s fundraising providing the rough equivalent of more than 20,000 cooked meals, 2,000 care packages, and almost two years worth of crisis accommodation.
Meanwhile, among the 2,000 walkers who took part, Troy Porter, a PwC veteran of over two decades and deals valuation partner within the firm’s transactions services division, has personally raised almost $18,000, the second-most of any individual. Incidentally, two of the other top ten amblers were both associated with KPMG; senior advisor Stephen Allen, and former associate director Nick Le Fevre, who both raised over $10,000.
Down south in Melbourne, the peeps of renegade consulting and professional services firm BlueRock have also recently been churning out the miles, as part of the firm’s September Steppers initiative. More than 150 ‘BlueRockers’ participated, “walking, running, skipping and dancing their way through the month”.
Altogether, the team racked up almost 45 million steps, or close to 35,000 kilometres, with its top three performers putting in over 30,000 steps per day.
To celebrate the achievement, the B-Corp certified consultancy put $5,000 towards its ‘Be BlueRock Foundation’, which supports donors to support a range of causes in three targeted areas; youth mental health, financial literacy for vulnerable groups, and environmental and animal conservation. Effectively, the foundation is a form of charitable trust, which oversees the administrative, tax and other requirements for individual and corporate donors.
Meanwhile, the AFR recently reported that BlueRock parent Everything is Awesome, an entrepreneurial consulting firm out of Melbourne co-founded by one-time Grant Thornton senior manager Peter Lalor, has been seeking to raise $15 million from potential investors, with the ambitious view of growing the Bluerock brand into a $500 million entity over the next five years generated through the establishment of 30 office around the world.
