The knock on effect of an idea. Here is the story of a modest charity collection – told backwards.

Our team collected more than £800 for the Movember initiative, benefiting various charities related to men’s cancers.

The majority of people at work donated money and all of them seemed to be doing so with a smile. We had many comments about our various styles of moustaches – all good hearted and I do believe the whole campaign contributed, in a small way, to office spirit.

A colleague of mine ordered the official Movember collection box and we had a manual collection in addition to the donations we received online.

Pictures of our moustaches were published in the staff magazine and also put on all internal television screens – all to the amusement of less hairy-lipped staff.

I asked a member of our communications team if she could help us to raise some awareness to see if we could collect money for the charity.

More and more colleagues started to sport a moustache and as the collective hair on our lips grew, so did the general awareness of why we were doing it.

A small group of colleagues committed to join me and grow a moustache for the whole month of November after I sold it to them as a novelty and a charitable endeavour.

I decided that since I always wanted to have a moustache, this was the perfect excuse to grow one. And if we received some money, I would be able to justify the hair on my face to my girlfriend and other skeptics under the guise of it being for charity. The perfect cover!

I received a general email directed to some of the men in the office, jokingly suggesting that we participate in the Movember initiative as the sender liked moustaches and would not mind a couple of “Tom Selleck” look-alikes roaming the office for a month.

A colleague of mine read a small article in a magazine about jewelry in the shape of moustaches and that the company selling it planned to donate part of their profit to the Movember cause.

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 Thank you Debbie, because of your small spark, we collected £800 in charitable donations, contributed to a spirit of wellbeing in the office, suffered some well intended ridicule and forfeited the odd bit of “leg-over” due to our partners not being as impressed with our “taches” as we were, but it was for a good cause and a lot of fun. Well done.