The Connacht Hospitality Group celebrated raising €90,000 for four amazing charities over the course of 2022 this week.
The group, which owns well-known Galway establishments including The Connacht Hotel, An Púcán, HYDE Hotel, Residence Hotel & 1520 Bar, and the Galway Bay Golf Resort, held a range of events at various stages of 2022 to fundraise for charities.
Across 2022, the Connacht Hospitality Group helped raise funds for four incredible charities, three of them local: Claddagh Watch Patrol, National Breast Cancer Research Institute (NBCRI), Galway Hospice, and Make-A-Wish Ireland.
The Connacht Hospitality Group arranged a diverse array of events to raise funds, and they had lots of imaginative ways of grabbing the public’s attention.
One event saw people attend HYDE Bar to savour a menu made by a mystery celebrity. In the end, it was revealed that TV personality Gráinne Seoige was the Executive Chef on a night that generated over €8,000 for the NBCRI.
Based out of the Lambe Institute at University of Galway, the NBCRI is a national charity that funds research into diagnosis and treatment of this disease.
Another saw CHG staff dare the early morning waters of the Atlantic in a ‘Sunrise Swim’ at Salthill, which saw donations pour in for the Claddagh Watch Patrol.
This volunteer organisation patrols the waterways of Galway City nightly to help prevent deaths by accident or suicide.
Easily one of the most successful events of the year was the Galway Bay Golf Resort’s Golf Classic which raised over €22,000 for Galway Hospice.
“Ultimately, it’s about making a difference to our community and to the charities that we support,” Brian Lynch, Group Head of Finance at the Connacht Hospitality Group, said about the reason behind the push to raise money.
Brian added that he was delighted to see the group create such an ambitious target 12 months prior.
For his own part, he remembers the ‘Sunrise Swim’ fondly, saying that they were lucky that it was such a nice morning, and that the water wasn’t too cold.
“The golf classic was a great event, too, because I think it was the greatest single event we’d ever done.”
“It wasn’t open to the public – we invited our commercial partners and stakeholders in the business to put teams in and we had enough teams to hit our target,” he said.
The €90,000 raised by the Connacht Hospitality Group last year vastly exceeded previous years’ targets of some €15,000 for charity.
For this year, the Galway City based Croí Heart & Stroke charity has been chosen as one of the group’s charity partners.
Brian Lynch added that for 2023 the CHG is looking to increase its fundraising target yet again, and hosting more events.
“We’re looking to partner with a small number of charities that are local and that we believe will engage with us.”
