NAACA Lunch and Auction of Pledges Success for Lincs & Notts Air Ambulance
On Sunday 22 January the Nottinghamshire Air Ambulance Countryside Appeal (NAACA) committee held their annual Lunch and Auction of Pledges and raised over £26,500 for the Lincs & Notts Air Ambulance (LNAA).
Over 400 people attended the prestigious lunch at Newark Showground and the day got off to a fantastic start when the helicopter and crew made a special guest appearance.
NAACA Chair, Jeff Bower gave a heartfelt welcome and thanked LNAA crew for the work that they do. He said: “After the COVID years, it is good to see a full room once again and I thank everyone for being here today and to those who generously donated such a wide array of auction and raffle prizes and pledges.”
LNAA Chief Executive Officer, Karen Jobling also expressed her thanks for their wonderful support. She said: “As one of the leading Helicopter Emergency Medical Service charities in the UK, we constantly challenge ourselves to deliver the very highest level of pre-hospital critical care to our patients. Last year we needed to raise £8million to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week We receive no direct funding from the Government, instead we rely on the wonderful generosity of individuals and groups like the NAACA committee to help fund our work and enable us to continue to be by the side of patients, day and night.”
Guests were treated to a sumptuous three course Sunday lunch before the Auction of Pledges got under way. A carriage ride, aeroplane experience flights, organic beef, days shooting, dinner parties and a week’s holiday in the Dordogne were just some of the splendid items up for auction and auctioneers Ian Walter and Charlie Bryant cajoled the lunch goers to bid for over 35 lots and raise as much as possible.
NAACA was created in 1998, when a few Nottinghamshire farmers recognised the importance of their local air ambulance and its ability to rapidly get to the scene of agricultural incidents. They quickly gathered support from the farming community and associated businesses and to date has raised a staggering £574,540. This has helped LNAA purchase vital equipment from boots and helmets for the paramedics to larger items including the charity’s Nottinghamshire Critical Care Car purchased in 2019. NAACA has also enabled LNAA be at the cutting edge of aviation safety development when in 2006 a donation of £49,800 enabled the helicopter to be fitted with a Transport Collision Avoidance System, making it the first in the country to be fitted with such a device, something which now is automatically included in all helicopters.
The auction and raffle combined raised over £26,500 on the day and with further proceeds arriving after the event, the final fundraising total was an amazing £31,015. The team at LNAA would like to thank everyone who took part in the day and made it such a success, raising vital funds for the charity.
