PEST UK & Operation Smile - PEST UK

Providing pest control services in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, London, Middlesex, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Surrey, West Midlands, West Sussex, Wiltshire. Est. 1985.

PEST UK & Operation Smile

In Operation Smile

PEST UK is a local pest control company servicing the South of England for both commercial and domestic pest control problems. In 2013 we decided that we would give 1% of our profits to charity. (or £400.00, whichever was greater) This decision was made because we wanted to give something back, it is good publicity and also the fact that we are bombarded with people phoneing, e mailing and writing asking for charitable donations. The problem with the last point is that a lot (but not all) are bogus charities so even though they give a sob story you don’t know that the money is actually going to a charity. Even if it does sometimes a percentage of the donation will go to the salesperson who collected the donation. Anyway after we decided we would give 1% of our annual profits to a charity we looked for a suitable charity. Our criteria was that we wanted a broad charity that was not religious or restricted to a certain country and would be long lasting (not targeting a specific disaster or area). The reason for this was so that we didn’t alienate any of our customers.

Now you may think that this was easy, it isn’t. The only condition we applied was that we could use the charities logo on our website to let our customers know and to advertise the charity. We approached: Oxfam, Medcine Frontier, Guide Dogs for the Blind, Save the Children, Feed the Children, Barnardos (we have a contract with Barnardos & Guide Dogs for the Blind, Children In Need, Sport Relief and many more. None of these would let us use their logo unless we donated at least £50 000.00 or they said that their major sponsors (I think Boots was one) would not let any other companies use the charity’s logo. It was like banging your head against a wall. If they (the charities) had any sense they would ditch the major companies and concentrate on the hundreds of thousands of small to medium sized companies who combined would outstrip these selfish large companies with donations.

Operation Smile had no such qualms and our next years donation (due later this month) will be nearly double that of last year.

What do they do?

Operation Smile takes kids who are born with cleft pallets and do a simple operation that fixes it, which is life changing and in some cases life saving for the children affected by this condition.

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