Ladies who network keep the charity cash rolling in

IT is eleven years since Karen Weaving set up Ribble Valley and White Rose Ladies to raise money for research into children’s cancer.

At the time she was running Stirk House Hotel in Lancashire and was approached by the then Cancer Research Campaign to hold a charity ball there.

The event raised £10,000 and Karen was asked if she would run a regular ladies luncheon club for the charity. “We really were ladies that lunched in those days,” says Karen. “We all wore hats; it was phenomenal, so we started meeting four times a year.”

Since then RV&WRL, as it is known, has raised an incredible £750,000 and become one of Cancer Research UK’s most successful fund-raising groups.

Last week Karen, and other members of the RV&WRL committee travelled to London to receive “Fundraising in the Community Award 2011” in the charity’s annual Flame of Hope awards.

Karen also received a special commendation in the charity’s “Fundraising Volunteer of the Year” category. “It was very humbling,” says Karen. “It is nice to win awards, but that’s not what we are about. We are about getting together and raising money to fight this terrible disease.”

Although there is an army of determined committee members and volunteers behind Karen, it is her leadership and event management skills which have proved the key to their success.

Karen, a successful businesswoman in her own right, runs Skipton’s Rendezvous Hotel with husband Malcolm. The hotel is now the “HQ” for RV&WRL and the venue for many of it’s fund-raising events.

“Without the Rendezvous we wouldn’t have been such a success,” says Karen. “It has allowed me to hold regular events and raise a lot of money.”

It is not just the venue that has helped the committee’s success. Karen Weaving is a very determined woman and does not take no for an answer. Her tenacity and networking has meant that even in the midst of a recession, last year alone they raised more than £100,000 and her events have attracted guest speakers such as Tara Palmer-Tompkinson, Paul Burrell and Christine Hamilton. The President of RV&WRL is Jana Khayat, former chairman of Fortnum and Mason and a member of the Weston family Associated British Foods dynasty.

“If you don’t ask you don’t get. People know us now and I think that helps in hard times,” says this straight-talking Lancashire woman, who has made Yorkshire her home and writes to everyone she invites personally.

Karen is no stranger to hard times. In the 1980s she and Malcolm lost everything when their Huddersfield textile business went under.

“We’d had a really nice lifestyle, a lovely home, a small baby and enjoyed the good things in life. Then suddenly it was all gone,” she recalls. The Weavings worked hard to save their business and even put their home up as personal guarantee.

“We had a good business and we were just so determined we would survive. But in the end we lost everything.”

Karen and Malcolm, 20 years her senior, are a testament to what hard work and determination can achieve in the face of adversity. With no formal background in the hospitality industry, Karen and baby Charlie took over an 18-bed hotel on the Isle of Arran. Malcolm was living in a caravan in the yard of the textile mill as he was winding up the business and commuted at weekends to Scotland to see his family. Despite it being the lowest of times, Karen and Malcolm are inherently positive people and were convinced that something would come along to help them. And it did. A business contact of Malcolm’s offered them a 100 per cent mortgage to buy the £80,000 hotel on Arran. It was to prove the beginning of Karen’s career in hotels.

But it was not an easy start. “I suppose it was running away. It was very hard work and very lonely, but we had to make it work.” Within three years they sold the business for double what they paid for it and paid back their loan. They bought an inn in Perth which they successfully ran for seven years, before moving to a bigger challenge, Stirk House in Gisburn. Karen was desperate to return home after discovering Charlie was dyslexic.

Stirk House was a run-down 52-bedroom hotel and within seven years they turned the place around, selling it for £2m, having bought it for £600,000.

Karen says they then thought about retirement, but this couple are not the type to put their feet up and in 2004 they bought the Rendezvous Hotel. They live on site and are very hands-on.

For the last seven years, she has juggled running the Rendezvous with being Secretary of RV&WRL and, although she is incredibly busy, she says she would never contemplate giving up her charity work. “One of our committee members lost her son aged 16 to cancer, another member of our committee and a close friend of mine died at the age of 47 leaving five children, They come to all our events, how could I ever say I was giving up?”

Next year Karen hopes they will hit their £1m mark, and get a third visit from HRH The Duke of Gloucester, president of Cancer Research UK, who travelled north to celebrate with the group in 2002 when they raised £250,000 and again in 2009 when they achieved £500,000.

They were nominated for the award by Sarah McPhee, the charity’s area volunteer manager. Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK Chief Executive, said, “Cancer Research UK has made enormous progress in the fight against cancer. We have only been able to do this thanks to the dedication and commitment of volunteers and supporters like Ribble Valley and White Rose Ladies. Our Flame of Hope Awards give us the opportunity to celebrate and say thank you to supporters for the fantastic work they do”, he added

As for the future, Karen hopes to organise a junior committee made up of young cancer survivors and the children of people with cancer. “There re some very feisty young girls and boys out there and I would love to start a junior branch for them.”

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