L-R: Paul and Reece
A father and son team whose business was founded during lockdown have set up a charitable foundation to help a range of causes.
Phat Lads Competitions was created by Reece Thornton-Bate during the height of Covid in 2020 as a side hustle.
But as the competition website grew in popularity, the 30-year-old from Cheadle, Staffordshire quit his recruitment job and brought his dad Paul Bate in to run the company with him.
Now three years on Phat Lads has amassed 40,000 Facebook followers (including closed group members) and 23,000 TikTok followers. Around 1000 people have won prizes totalling around £500,000. Prizes have included cars, money, laptops, phones, gaming consoles as well as children’s toys.
As the company goes from strength to strength and with plans to rival some of the biggest competition websites in the country, the father and son team want to give something back to their local community.
They’ve set up Phat Lads Charitable Foundation (a registered charity) after helping a number of people with fundraising activities and donations over the last few years, including helping raise money for a family holiday for a three-year-old from Stoke-on-Trent who is suffering with cancer.
The foundation will help families in need and other causes on a case-by case-basis. This week the Foundation has donated £2,000 worth of ride on cars to the NHS, with four going to Staffordshire Children’s Hospital at the Royal Hospital in Stoke as well as to hospitals in Cheshire and Birmingham. They’ll be used to ‘drive,’ children from treatment centres to the wards. Their donation coincides with Staffordshire Children’s Hospital’s third anniversary.
Reece said: “I set up Phat Lads at the start of Covid. Initially it was a Facebook page and I started by giving away a pair of football boots. I think because we were all staying at home, people had time on their hands and the page soon became more and more popular – to the point where it got big enough for myself and my dad to run it as a full-time business.
“We’ve got a great relationship and have lots of fun doing the Facebook lives and TikTok which seems to have captured people’s imagination because we do such daft things. Hopefully, we make people laugh as well as giving them the chance to win some great prizes, although we obviously urge people to be gamble aware.
“Now that we’ve got such an online presence, we felt it was important to use that to be able to support our local community and have got big plans to make a real difference in the future. We are a small Stoke-on-Trent based charity with big aspirations and even bigger hearts. The Foundation will enable us to do even more to help families in our community who are in need, to financially help those who don’t have anywhere else to turn,” he added.
Paul from Birches Head said: “During lockdown we were contacted by a number of people who were struggling to buy food, so we donated a number of food parcels. We know that more and more people need help with things like that and we want to be able to do that officially through the Foundation. It’s a bit corny but very true that we want to try to help make as many families’ lives as possible just that little bit easier, better and happier. Whether it’s by delivering food parcels and essential care packages, helping with travel costs for hospital visits, buying headstones for bereaved families, buying essential specialist medical equipment or donating prizes to numerous fundraisers including children’s hospitals, we will try to help wherever and whenever we can.
The 51-year-old added: “We want to see it grow and ultimately have plans to set up a foodbank and a clothes shop for those people that need support who won’t have to pay a penny for anything. We’ve got events planned too and, in the summer, we’re holding a family fun day at Newcastle Rugby Club to help raise money for the Foundation which in turn will help even more people in need.”
Mark Jones, Directorate Manager at Staffordshire Children’s Hospital at Royal Stoke said: “We’re incredibly grateful to Phat Lads Competitions for their kind donation, the ride-on toys will be shared between departments across the Children’s Hospital. Patients would normally travel between appointments or to theatre on beds which is a scary experience for them in our clinical areas. But it’s thanks to Phat Lads Completions that the fear factor has been taken away and replaced by an exciting experience.”
Going forward the Foundation will have its own website, they will be applying for gift aid, selling branded merchandise on the website once launched, all profits of which will go to the charity, as well as looking for other corporate sponsors.
If you know of a cause that you think the Foundation could help, please email [email protected] or message the Phat Lads Competitions Facebook page. All contact will be treated with the utmost compassion and confidentiality.To find out more about Phat Lads go to www.phatlads.com
