Party for the People on clubbing and philanthropy

We live in a time when businesses have an opportunity to do well by doing good. Social purpose is stirring more and more young go-getters to become organised philanthropists, working hard to make a valuable impact in their local community and beyond. 

Tom Laidler, Simon Brown, Steve Rimmer and Liam O'Reilly are among those shaking things up a bit. This enterprising posse has spent the best part of three years building Party for the People (PFTP), a fundraising vehicle which channels a percentage of unavoidable ticket booking fees into worthy causes. Back in 2012, they were on sweaty Sheffield dancefloors collecting bits of change in a bucket for the Leeds Little Livers project; in 2015, they broke the £30,000 mark for donations supporting 25 UK charities. They can still be found on dancefloors in Sheffield every so often, minus the bucket.

The truth is, whether you're a promoter or a punter, nobody likes booking fees. Turning these fees into something positive is a pretty sweet idea that has quickly resonated with tons of artists, promoters, venues and volunteers across Sheffield, Bristol, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, London and Edinburgh – all of whom play a vital role in spreading the impact of PFTP further and further afield.

As the New Year reared its lovely head, we managed to get some quality time with all four chaps to discuss the journey so far, and their plans for 2016...

The Skinny: Marvellous idea, guys. Where did it originate?

Party for the People: Well, we all shared a love of clubbing and a desire to do some good in the community. Simon and Liam were working together in a call centre in our post-uni days and ran with an idea to fundraise through music and generate some wider impact from all the sweaty hedonism. At the start we were bucket-raising on dancefloors, but the idea developed into diverting those unavoidable booking fees towards great causes. 

We quickly partnered with our friends at [club nights/collectives] Collect!, Cargo and Drumro[ll], sold tickets for them online and added a small mandatory donation to the face value. The positive response was overwhelming so we just ran with it and set up our own website. Those guys deserve huge credit, and Party for the People wouldn't be where it is today without that so we owe them a lot.

Over the past few years we've also been lucky enough to receive incredible support from DJs who’ve donated their time and talents and allowed us to give all the profits from the party to the chosen cause. We really have to give a special mention to Prosumer who got in touch and offered to tear things up at [Sheffield venue] The Harley at our first party. That was incredible and really made us realise we were on to something. 

(Let’s pretend) I’m an idiot. Can you talk me through how the business works?

So we took the basic concept of every ticketing platform, charging a booking fee for providing services to the promoter and the attendee, and repurposed this to create social good rather than pure profit. Our organisation is structured as a social enterprise and we’re 100% non-profit. Anything we make on top of covering our costs gets donated to the charities that we partner with, and we’re able to do this while having some of the lowest fees of any agency. By adding this donation we can turn every event into a fundraiser.

For various reasons, ticket-selling sites generally don't have the best public perception. Speaking from personal experience, promoting independent parties can be really tough work. It can be painful to see a ticketing agency taking £100 for sending some automated emails while you lose double that after spending hours in the rain handing out flyers. I think seeing those charges go towards a positive social impact... well, it just really adds to the event. We allow customers and promoters to give something to those that might not be fortunate enough to attend, and all without spending anything more than they would otherwise. 

What was the first charity you supported?

The first charity we ever supported was called Leeds Little Livers, a project based at the Leeds Children's Hospital. Many of the first charities we supported were operating locally or had connections here [in Sheffield] – CRESST, Sheffield Mind and The Long Well Walk to name a few. We’ve gone on to support over 25 charities – some of those are long-standing relationships and others are one-off donations. Working with Pangaea Festival in Manchester has been fantastic. It’s Europe’s biggest student-run festival and we’ve been able to work with the [Manchester] Raising and Giving Society and the Students' Union to raise thousands for charities ranging from local food and clothing banks and crisis centres to major international charities working to cure disease. 

(Continues below)

More from Clubs:

 Hidden: Shaking up Manchester's clubbing scene

 Tweaking things: an interview with Denis Sulta

You seem to be expanding at a rate of knots, supporting more and more charities every year. Where else do the donations go?

We’ve supported a huge range of causes close to home, from cutting-edge cancer, Alzheimer’s and meningitis research to speed awareness campaigns, and projects offering a range of support to sex workers, providing arts therapy for individuals with severe learning difficulties and empowering marginalised youths by opening direct dialogues with local community leaders.

Further afield, we were able to raise £5000 through our partnership with Farm Festival and that has gone towards Project Jyambere run by the Send a Cow foundation. The project helps families in the Nyaruguru and Nyanza districts of rural Rwanda, providing livestock and working together with locals to cater for their agricultural needs alongside supporting gender equality and conflict resolution. 

Women for Women International is another fantastic organisation with similar aims. They work to bring together women in a safe space to learn life, business and vocational skills and, vitally, they provide each woman with a monthly stipend to ensure that there are no barriers to participation. We were able to support literacy training for 35 individuals this year.

We were also able to give £3000 to Médecins Sans Frontières, whose absolutely incredible team of healthcare professionals provides medical support for people who would otherwise lack basic access to due to conflict, humanitarian crises, pandemics and natural disasters. Thanks to their hard work our donation was equivalent to generating 71 million litres of purified water that would supply 10,000 people every day for a year.

We hear you’ve got some great events lined up for this year. Tell us more about them? 

Well, the big news is that we’ll be setting up the PFTP Foundation, a charity through which we aim to support disadvantaged youths the world over. We’ll be starting off close to home and providing a series of music workshops for socially excluded young persons in Sheffield living with disabilities, alongside the Under the Stars and Musical Works foundations. Following the 12-week programme, we will host an event at [Sheffield venue] The Night Kitchen at which the participants will have the opportunity to show off their skills. 

We also have a few fundraising events lined up, including Breach at The Night Kitchen on 26 Feb. There’ll be a few throughout the year between Sheffield, Bristol, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Manchester and hopefully elsewhere! 

February is also set to be a really busy month and we’ll also be launching our new and vastly improved website, so it’s all hands on deck for that.

Tell us a bit about your resident DJs...

So over the years we have been lucky enough to amass a pretty wicked collection of residents, some of whom have been a really big part of the PFTP journey, including Chiddy, who helped us when PFTP was just getting started, and, of course, Tom, who alongside being a stellar partner reps the PFTP DJ flag on many fronts.

We have the super-talented Red Bull Music Academy affiliate ES.Q (FKA Squarehead), a Steel City stallion with releases on WOLF Music, Let's Play House, Pets and Shabby Doll. There's also Pedram, another of Sheffield's relatively unsung heroes, who has been making some really wicked new stuff due out on Born Electric in the new year. Emily May, our resident disco diva, has been repping PFTP hard since day dot. Our latest convert is Ste Roberts, who's best known for running Hypercolour alongside Alex Jones and Jamie Russell. If you want to hear more...

How do you feel about ticket touts?

Touting isn’t such a crime but the main problem is automated resale sites. It's touting 2.0 and fans are being exploited to the extreme. That said, we do have to mention Twickets and other sites that are doing it right and using global connectivity to help fans rather than rip them off.

What advice would you give to young social entrepreneurs looking to set up their own business?

I’d say don’t waste too much time planning, just focus on doing. Pick up a notepad and go speak to people. Plans are plastic and you’ll probably find yourself totally changing your initial ideas to something better.

Other than purchasing tickets through your site, what ways can supporters get further involved in the cause?

We’re always on the lookout for new blood so please come to one of our parties and say hello, or drop us an email! We’d really like to hear from anyone else working on ethical projects related to the industry. We recently set up a relationship with All Ears, a grassroots organisation who aim to spread awareness around tinnitus through their simple but effective ‘tinnitus is shit’ message and dishing out free earplugs. 

We'll continue to use The Night Kitchen as a space for positive impact and have just set up the PFTP Coat Drive with [Sheffield venues] Union St and The Workstation, Shelter and a few others to help those in need stay warm over winter. We’re always in need of willing volunteers for projects like this and are open to any new connections in the UK.