May Ball ticket holders donate over £12,000 to charity

Wednesday 20 January 2021

Ticket holders who had been due to attend the biennial St Catharine’s May Ball in 2020 have donated £12,237.75 to four charities. The May Ball Committee has announced that it collected donations on behalf of 227 ticket holders, eleven of whom chose to donate the full price of their tickets.

The May Ball was cancelled last summer due to the public health restrictions introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the following months, the Committee, the JCR, the MCR and the College’s Governing Body worked together to enable ticket holders to choose between claiming a 100% refund and donating some or all of their refund.

The Committee selected four charities to benefit from the generosity of ticket holders:

Jimmy’s Cambridge, which supports people experiencing homelessness (33% of all donations);
Sahabat Anak, which brings education to marginalised children in Indonesia (33%);
Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust, supporting innovation in patient care across Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (16.5%); and
The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, an interdisciplinary research centre within the University of Cambridge dedicated to the study and mitigation of risks that could lead to human extinction or civilisational collapse (16.5%).

Alex Denny (2017, Archaeology), May Ball President, commented, “The Committee is absolutely delighted to be able to support four charities that are especially important at the moment: whether tackling homelessness, improving access to education or responding to COVID-19, the work of these charities makes a huge difference. We cannot thank our ticket holders enough for their kindness.”

Helen Hayward (2018), Operations Director and May Ball Fellow, added, “Everyone involved has been acutely aware of the difficult circumstances that led to the May Ball’s cancellation and the financial pressures that ticket holders may have been facing last year. This makes it especially remarkable that so many ticket holders took the opportunity to make a donation. It took us time to agree and set-up robust arrangements for refunds and donations, and this behind-the-scenes work would not have been possible without the patience and ongoing support of ticket holders.”