In 2025 my company, Clickingmad, turned 25 years old.

We could have bought a cake, posted a neat message on social and moved on.

Instead, one awkward question would not leave me alone:

"If we have been in business this long, what are we really doing for the place we live and the people around us."

That question turned into 25 in 25 - our decision to spend our 25th year supporting at least twenty five charities and community causes with our skills, our time and our energy.

By the end of the year we had sailed past that number and helped more than 32.

When the whiteboard exploded

The plan was simple

  • Use our digital skills to help good causes stand out online
  • Get out from behind our screens and do practical things in our communities
  • Remind our team that business is about people and place, not just profit

I shared the idea with the team.

At lunch somebody wrote the name of a charity on our office whiteboard. Then another. Then another.

Very quickly the board was covered in Shropshire causes the team cared about. That was the moment twenty five in twenty five stopped being my idea and became our project.

Since then we have supported organisations including Shropshire Cat Rescue, Sympho and Shropshire Music Service, West Mercia Search and Rescue, Coverage Care, Severn Hospice, All Sports Coaching, Lingen Davies and Shropshire Investors in Community.

On paper they do very different things. In reality they all have one thing in common

They catch people when life drops them.

What I learned from the people behind the logos

The part that moved me the most was not the brand names but the human beings behind them.

They are not sitting in large offices. Most are fitting the work around jobs, children, caring responsibilities and everything else life throws at them. They do it for little or no pay. They do it because they care and because they cannot walk past the need.

They do it so that someone they may never meet can have

  • A warm coat
  • A food parcel
  • A love of music
  • A safe place to sit
  • A listening ear
  • A hand to hold when everything feels like it is falling apart

Once you have seen that up close, it is very hard to treat business as something separate and sealed away.

Why Shropshire businesses should look up from their screens

As a business owner I know profit matters. Without it we cannot pay people properly or invest in what we do.

But if profit is the only measure, we are missing something important.

The people running these small charities are keeping whole parts of our society afloat. They are not doing it for share options. They are doing it because they see a need and cannot ignore it.

The rest of us in the Shropshire business community have a choice.

We can admire them from a distance.

Or we can say we have skills and resources, how do we stand alongside you

For us the real return has been clear

  • Our team feels proud of where they work
  • Younger staff see a version of business that is about contribution as well as income
  • People bring more empathy and patience into client work
  • Culture has become something you can see and feel, not just read on a page

The value our team has gained from planting trees in Alveley, skydiving for Lingen Davies, folding baby clothes for Little Stars, litter picking in Bridgnorth and sharing tea and games with care home residents is worth far more than any number in a spreadsheet.

So my question to other Shropshire businesses is simple

What could your own birthday celebration look like?

And who in our county could you help to be seen and heard next year

Full story on LinkedIn

There is a much longer version of this story with all the detail of what we did and what we learned, read it here:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-25-taught-me-my-business-shaun-carvill-f5o0e/