Northampton Saints face masks go marching out the door...raising £14,540 for good causes

A total of £14,540 was donated by Northampton Saints jointly to the Northamptonshire Health Charity and Saints Foundation following the outstanding sales of Black, Green and Gold facemasks.

Thanks to extraordinary demand, the Saints Store quickly sold more than 4,000 facemasks in total, which featured a club crest design – with a commitment to donate all profits towards the two charities.

While the masks did not offer medical-grade protection (and therefore did not risk taking supplies of personal protection equipment away from front-line key workers) they were designed to complement protective measures and social distancing rules.

Northamptonshire Health Charity supports local NHS hospitals and community services above and beyond what the NHS can provide, and has allocated the money to the community midwifery unit currently set-up at Franklin’s Gardens to allow them to continue to offer a superb service for expectant mothers in the area.

Meanwhile, Northampton Saints Foundation is continuing to deliver many of its vital programmes to vulnerable young people in Northamptonshire during the lockdown period.

Alison McCulloch, head of fundraising at Northamptonshire Health Charity, said: “We want to give Saints huge thanks for raising funds to support our community midwives during these times, and in such an innovative way.

“The amount raised by selling these unique facemasks is incredible and will go a long way to helping us to fund the alternative accommodation that our community midwifery teams need.

“We are very proud to be supporting our local NHS teams and we couldn’t do it without the support of our local community, so thank you very much to Northampton Saints!”

“The generosity of Northampton Saints raising funds through facemask sales and donating to the Foundation has helped to sustain us through our most difficult period to date,” added Catherine Deans, managing director at Northampton Saints Foundation.

“The pandemic has caused unprecedented challenges for our charity and the programmes we offer to educate, inspire and support young people across Northamptonshire. With schools and further education providers closing, and the majority of our fundraising events getting cancelled, our core revenue streams were hit fast and hard.

“We have remained open for our most vulnerable students, so we are incredibly grateful for this support – to all of those who bought the facemasks, and to the club, thank you.”