Our values

We treat everyone in an honest and ethical way, and we take our social responsibilities seriously:

We are champions of struggling students and those with special needs.
We make our products as accessible as possible to users of alternative input methods, including eye gaze and switches.
We conduct all our business with honesty and integrity.
We ensure that the company contributes to the wellbeing of the communities in which we operate.

Our environmental credentials

In 2021 we attained the Investors in the Environment Silver level. Now we’re working for the Green level.

In 2023, we installed 90 solar panels on our roof, which generate as much energy as we use over a year.
Wherever possible we now use online meetings with schools and local authorities rather than travelling.
When we need to travel, we go by train where possible, and we don’t fly within the UK.
The refurbishment of our building won a Green Apple Award and we’ve made further improvements to reduce our energy use.
We buy certified offsets from Forest Carbon to offset all our remaining carbon emissions.

Cycle Friendly Employer

Following an audit by Cycling UK, we have achieved the Silver level of accreditation as a Cycle Friendly Employer. This is a recognition of our endeavours to foster an inclusive and sustainable workplace.

This accreditation is only awarded to organisations that have exemplary cycle-friendly facilities. These include secure indoor cycling parking, free loan bikes and access to the cycle to work scheme.

Community support: The Lowdown

For 2024, the team has chosen The Lowdown as our charity of the year.

The Lowdown provides free and confidential support services for 11- 25-year-olds in Northamptonshire and believes that no young person should ever experience mental health issues alone. They offer a caring environment where young people are always supported on their journey towards positive emotional health and wellbeing.

The Lowdown works with young people to provide accessible, safe, welcoming, confidential and non-judgemental services including:

Counselling
Information, Advice & Advocacy
Wellbeing
LGBTQ+
Youth Groups
Sexual Health

Last year, over 2000 young people were supported by the charity!

The Lowdown’s work is vital to thousands of young people in Northamptonshire, so the team felt strongly that they should receive our support as Crick Software’s charity of the year 2024.

We have lots of fun activities planned to ensure that 2024 is our most successful fundraising year ever, including bake sales and sponsored challenges. As ever, we’ll keep you posted via our Facebook and X channels.

Community support: KidsAid

For 2023 we continued to support our 2022 chosen charity of the year: KidsAid. Founded in 2007, KidsAid is a Northamptonshire charity born out of the realisation that there was a considerable lack of provision for young people who had suffered trauma.

KidsAid is on the front line of a growing mental health crisis, with referrals to their team more than doubling since the start of the pandemic.

Through the mediums of art, dance, drama, and play, their fantastic team of therapists support children of all ages struggling with bereavement, illness, neglect, bullying, abuse, family breakdown, and other traumatic circumstances.

We were highly impressed by KidsAid’s extensive therapy programme for parents and caregivers too, giving each child the best possible chance to break intergenerational trauma and move forward with their lives.

During 2022 and 2023, we raised a fantastic total of £6,398 for KidsAid through a range of fundraising activities including: cake sales, gifting items for the therapy room, raising money at our TES SEN London Show raffle, our colleague Celia’s incredibly brave abseil down the National Lift Tower, Christmas jumper day and sponsored gift wrapping!

"With the support of Crick Software, we are excited to share that we have refurnished our therapy rooms and purchased new toys, creative materials, and therapy resources."

Community support: Filling in the Blanks

For 2021, we were proud to work with US charity, Filling in the Blanks who are based in Norwalk, Connecticut. They provide food bags for thousands of children who suffer from food insecurity.

For these children, weekends, summer breaks from school and snow days can be scary times. They may not know where their next meal is coming from – and the COVID pandemic has only exacerbated these fears. Filling in the Blanks works to relieve these worries by ensuring that these children have nutritious meals.

We had lots of ideas to raise money throughout the year, some of our favourite fundraisers included a Halloween quiz, a virtual 5k walk, assisting with their holiday backpack drive, Christmas Jumper Day and a virtual food drive.

Despite frequent lockdowns and working from home mandates, we managed to raise over $2,000!

To find out more about Filling in the Blanks and how we supported them last year, take a look at our blog.

Community support: Magic Breakfast

With children’s education at the heart of everything we do, it only made sense for us to support an education-oriented charity. For 2020, we chose to make Magic Breakfast our charity of the year.

Magic Breakfast works with 480 Primary, Secondary, Special Educational Needs schools and Pupil Referral Units to provide healthy breakfasts to ensure that more than 48,000 vulnerable children across the UK start their school day in the best possible way.

Children in Magic Breakfast schools make on average the equivalent of two months’ additional progress compared to children who do not have breakfast at all. This is not only because breakfast gives children the energy to learn in the morning, but also because of the valuable social experience that a breakfast club provides.¹

Throughout 2020, we ran several events in support of Magic Breakfast. In February, we organised a breakfast club for staff members in the UK and US offices, which was an excellent opportunity to catch up with each other.

During the COVID pandemic, we had to adapt our fundraising plans. In spite of this, we were still able to organise an Easter quiz, a virtual pumpkin carving competition and a Christmas jumper day! One of our ongoing efforts was a ‘Book Swap’ campaign. In December we took part in the Big Give initiative, which doubled all the donations we made.

^{1 Education Endowment Foundation. (2019). Magic Breakfast | Projects. [online] Available at: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/magic-breakfast/#research-results.}

Community support: Hope Centre

The Hope Centre is an organisation based in Northampton that works to improve the lives of anyone affected by poverty, especially homelessness. Since its foundation in 1974, it has worked with tens of thousands of people in Northampton.

The Hope Centre:

provides practical services that help people to survive poverty and homelessness;
helps people to leave poverty and homelessness through training and skills to improve employability;
campaigns against poverty, negative attitudes and poor treatment towards people experiencing homelessness and poverty.

Because of cuts to social services over the last few years, more and more people have been utilising services like foodbanks.² We wanted to work with the Hope Centre to support their invaluable work helping those in our community who are most affected by the problems caused by poverty and homelessness.

In late 2018, we started with a few collection boxes for our staff to donate supplies to the Hope Centre, such as food and clothing. Due to the overwhelming success of this initiative, we nominated the Hope Centre to be our ‘charity of the year’ for 2019. In addition to the collection boxes, we also organised several company events to raise money.

We put our baking skills to the test for the Crick Software Bake Off and channelled our inner artists for a Pumpkin Carving Competition. Our Marketing Manager also successfully completed five 5k races across Northamptonshire. By the end of 2019, we had raised over £1,000 for the Hope Centre.

^{2 Clarke, D. (2020). Foodbank users UK 2019 | Statista. [online] Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/382695/foodbanks-emergency-food-needed-united-kingdom-uk/.}