More Spreading Happiness News: Gamely Donates to Justlife

Fresh from our donation to The Carer’s Centre for Brighton and Hove, we’re delighted to tell you that last we donated £1000 to Justlife, a wonderful charity working with the ‘hidden homeless’ in Brighton and Manchester. We also sent the team a box of brownies as a little encouragement and small way of saying thank you for all the hard work they do.

If you’ve been following us for much time, you’ll already know that we give away 10% of our profits to charity, which this donation comes out of. But what you might not know is that as part of our desire to be the best employers out there, we give each member of the team the chance to pick where a portion of that money goes. Justlife was Dave’s pick, and here’s what he had to say:

“Justlife are an amazing charity. They are helping really vulnerable people who are often ignored by the system. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people in the UK living in inadequate ‘temporary’ accommodation, who are desperately in need of support. Brighton is a great place to live, but this sort of homelessness is a real issue here, and as I’ve got to know the work of Justlife in the last few years I’ve seen that they are doing their work in an amazingly kind, loving and empowering way. Huge thanks to them, and huge thanks to Gamely for letting me choose where to donate this money!.”

We also asked Simon Gale, Operations Manager for Justlife in Brighton, to tell us a bit more about Justlife, where the donation will be used, and why their work is important:

“We are so grateful for Gamely’s donation. We work with hidden homeless people in Brighton and Manchester - people who often have no support and are placed in temporary accommodation that is unsuitable and leads to poor physical and mental health. Our work provides people a voice and helps them move away from homelessness, into stable accommodation and all round good health. The donation will enable us to support people over this Christmas period, which can often be isolating and hard time for people experiencing homelessness.”

We’re so glad to have been able to donate to the amazing charities that we have, but the only reason we can do that is because of everyone who buys our games - that’s you! A small portion of every sale goes to these good causes, so as much as we hope you’ve had loads of fun playing the game, we hope that this little bit of extra good helps you feel even better about buying Gamely. Thank you to all of you, and happy Christmas!

What happens when you turn down investment on Dragon's Den?

I can’t quite believe that almost a whole year has passed since I appeared on Dragon’s Den! It feels like just yesterday that I was sat nervously on the sofa with Chris, laughing again at Deborah Meaden’s amazing Randomise acting skills and watching through my fingers as the version of me on screen tried to negotiate a business deal with Jenny...

As you may remember, I turned down Jenny’s offer in the end (it just didn’t suit the way we want to do business) and as I left the den, Peter Jones exclaimed ‘She’ll live to regret that!’. One year on, I’m delighted to say that this prediction has proved to be totally inaccurate! 2019 has proved to be a year of doing good, having fun and selling plenty of games! With our Christmas Special due for a re-run this Sunday (BBC2 8pm) I thought I’d give a little update on what happened next and share some lessons from my experience.

Now, firstly I will say that expanding internationally has been a challenge, and we are now looking at collaborating with other games companies who may be able to help us reach worldwide audiences. But, our success in the UK has been even better than we hoped. At the time of writing, we have sold more than 100,000 games and we have just won the Amazon Small Business of the Year award. Every week, we hear new stories of how our games have helped people connect and laugh together and we couldn’t be happier about the way we are doing business.

We are a unique business, and as the year has passed we’ve realised more and more that not having any external investors really allows us to be ourselves. For us, business is not just about profit - it’s about doing good, making the world a better place and having fun while we’re doing it. As well as releasing two brand new games - Jibbergiggle and Frozen Unicorns - and adding Dave to our dream team, this year we’ve donated thousands of pounds to charity, given away hundreds of games to good causes and have sought to look after our team well in all sorts of ways. While we believe that these things are ultimately good for business, and very compatible with having a profitable business, we don’t have to prove the ‘cause and effect’ to anyone. And this freedom really allows us to take risks, give generously and act from the heart.

So, in summary, can investors be helpful to a small and growing company? Of course they can. But, there are plenty of other places to get input, advice and support. And for us, the freedom and flexibility that comes from being independent of investors brings huge benefits. While investment can be helpful, I’d encourage any young company to think twice, and consider where they can find other sources of finance, knowledge and support to make the business that they want - and not the business that an investor may be imagining.

I feel confident that Gamely is a significantly better, healthier and happier business for following its own path over the last 12 months and I’m pleased to report that, despite Peter’s predictions, I’m yet to feel even a hint of regret.

P.s. We wouldn’t be able to do any of this without the amazing support of our families, friends, mentors (including the brilliant people we met at Kings 20) and partners. And of course, every single one of you who has ever bought, played or talked about any of our games. We feel incredibly lucky to be able to be doing what we do and we are thinking up even more ways to share the love and do even more good things for our customers, our team and the wider world in 2020.

Putting Smiles On Faces - Gamely Donate to Carer's Centre

Young Carer’s drop-in activities in full swing

At Gamely we like to do good things - good things for our customers, good things for our team and good things for the wider world. Today, we’re donating £1200 to the Carer’s Centre for Brighton and Hove.

You may or may not know that at Gamely we give 10% of our profits (or 1% of turnover - whichever is bigger) to good causes and the Carer’s Centre is a wonderful local charity doing amazing work, well deserving of this donation.

Hazel and Dave recently visited their Young Carer’s Drop-in service, where they met some of the incredible young carers the charity works with. As well as having lots of fun playing our games with them, they both went away really impacted by the challenges these young people face, and the incredible strength and resilience that they show through it all. They really are amazing!

The money that we are donating will go towards paying for a special Christmas activity for these young carers, with more left over for other work that will help support future work of the Carer’s Centre. Tom Lambert, CEO of the Carer’s Centre had this to say: ‘The generosity of Gamely is a recognition of the amazing work Young Carers do in supporting ill or disabled family members every day across Brighton & Hove. The Carers Centre will use this amazing donation to provide peer support activities for isolated Young Carers over the festive period and into 2020’.

We’re also donating 40 games to be used as Christmas gifts for each young person attending their drop-in, as part of our initiative to get free games to children most in need of a smile.

Carer’s Centre trip to the beach

We also want to say a massive THANK YOU to all of you who have bought our games - this is your donation as much as ours and is only possible because of your support. This is just the first donation we are making this Christmas, so do stay tuned here for more good news coming soon.