Welcome to our online shopping mall and blog where a single click helps save lives as you pop in and out of your favourite online stores.
This shopping portal is dedicated to fundraising for Cancer Research UK to support the life-saving research work undertaken by the charity.
Thanks to supporters like you, Cancer Research UK has saved millions of lives by discovering new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer. Over the past century, its researchers have made consistent progress in the fight against cancer, and survival rates have doubled over the past 40 years.
- a single click takes you to your favourite online store or you can search for stores offering the type of product you are looking for
- you browse the store’s site and place your order
- you receive your goods
- we receive a commission
- we pay 100% of the commission to Cancer Research UK
- no extra cost to you
When shopping online, please visit this site first so that, with a single click, we can transfer you to your favourite online retailer with a little ‘cookie’ telling them we sent you. The retailer will pay us a commission for anything you buy and we pass this on to Cancer Research UK in its entirety – absolutely no deductions whatsoever – unlike other sites which operate on a commercial, ‘for-profit’ basis, and pass on just a small percentage of the commission they receive. Please remember, every time you shop, you must first visit this site to allow us to transfer you to the retailer with a single click. The page you are reading is displayed the first time you visit the site – subsequent visits will take you directly to a list of your favourite stores where, with a single click, we transfer you directly to your chosen store.
Importantly, the price you pay to the retailer is exactly the same as if you go directly to the retailer’s site. It won’t cost you a penny more and, because we feature special offers from our partner stores, you could actually save money. Just by shopping, you’ll be helping Cancer Research UK further its ground-breaking research work so that, together, we can Beat Cancer Sooner!
The blog
The ‘blog’ feature provides a platform for discussion and feedback from and between visitors to the site. Please feel free to create a blog post for any topic you think might be of interest to other users of the site e.g. recommended online stores, suggestions for new stores to be added, discussions on fundraising for Cancer Research UK, fundraising events etc.
Special offers
Our partner stores continually supply us with details of special offers, often not immediately obvious when visiting the retailer’s site. We make these offers easily accessible by linking deep into the retailer’s website. By using these links, you could be saving yourself money and helping Cancer Research UK at the same time.
A selection of current special offers is always displayed in the side or bottom panels of every screen; clicking on ‘See more …’ will display the details of all current special offers for all stores. When a store’s icon is displayed, the caption beneath the icon is highlighted in colour if there are special offers for that store; click on the caption to view them.
Shopping lists
To help you organise your shopping, we’ve built a shopping list feature into the website. You can create lists attached to particular stores, or general, unattached lists that you might use to shop across multiple stores. Shopping lists could come in handy if, for example, you do a weekly grocery shop. In between shops, you could add items to grocery store’s list as you think of them, or as you run out of them, so you don’t forget anything when you come to do the shop.
Shopping lists can also help you save money. In our description of each store, we provide you with details of delivery charges and, where possible, a link to the retailer’s page describing delivery options. Many retailers offer free delivery based on a minimum order value. By attaching a shopping list to the retailer’s site, you could add non-urgent items over a period of time until you reach the free delivery level.
Your favourite stores
We have partnership agreements with many, many stores and you can see them all by clicking on ‘shop’ in the menu or using ‘search‘ with an empty search box. You can also use the search facility to find a store you particularly like to shop in. With a single click you can add it to your ‘personal favourites’ which are displayed when you click favourites in the menu. Your ‘personal favourites’ are always available so you can get to the store with just a a single click.
If we don’t yet have a partnership agreement with one of your favourite stores, you can easily add that store to the website, and to your list of personal favourites, so that ALL your stores are available in a single place with just a a single click. Of course, we don’t earn any commission on your purchases from these stores, however, if you let us know, we’ll negotiate with the store to set up a partnership agreement so that Cancer Research UK can benefit from your purchases at that store.
Your security
The security of your data and transactions is of prime importance to us. To this end, we have striven to implement the recommendations and requirements, and the spirit, of the two key pieces of European legislation designed to protect citizens, entities and their data – the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Directive on privacy and electronic communications, also known as the ePrivacy Directive and commonly known as the ‘cookie law’. You can read more about your security when using this site.
We don’t require you to register with us, or to log in or to give us any personal details, so you can be assured of your security and anonymity. Once we transfer you to the retailer’s site, we have no knowledge of your interactions with that site. If you have online accounts with any of the retailers, you just log on to that account and shop as normal – we have NO knowledge of any data you enter into the retailers’ sites, including logon names and passwords.
The stores we transfer you to are the official sites for the individual retailers, and, because we automatically pass you to those sites with a single click, you can be assured that you’ve not mistyped the web address and ended up on a bogus, scam site.
The independent Get Safe Online website contains a wealth of advice on online shopping and other aspects of online activity.
Cookies
This website uses cookies which contain no personal data and present no security problems. You can read about our use of cookies and choose to delete them, if you want to, after you’ve finished shopping by selecting the menu option ‘etc>preferences’ and checking the ‘Delete cookies’ box.
About us
Although the group was formally founded in August 1989, the first seeds were (ironically) “sown” on the artificial turf of Luton Town F.C.’s ground some 2½ years previously. It is not unusual that an untimely death due to cancer inspires some sort of fundraising effort and when Maureen Ennis passed away after a relatively short but no less distressing fight against breast cancer in October 1986, at the incomprehensively young age of 49, a football match in her memory was duly organised for 4th January 1987. The memories of the match are now somewhat faded but I recall that it was a bitterly cold day and the records will show the Taylor’s Dummies defeated the Balding Eagles 3-1 in a keenly contested game. The day before, Luton had beaten Chelsea 1-0 in a top division match on the same surface. It was after all a very long time ago! Over the next couple of years, two further matches between the Dummies and the Eagles took place (albeit with some amendments to personnel) with one victory apiece. Before the third match of the series, treasure hunts and quiz evenings had also been held in the City and soon after that we decided to make it all more official.
So the South Bedfordshire Friends of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) was formed at a meeting in the Castle Public House, London E1. We have in fact outlasted the pub which sadly closed a few years ago. There have been two name changes to our group since then. The first was a change to City of London as our geographical identifier, thereby more accurately reflecting our fundraising base and the second in 2002 when Cancer Research Campaign merged with ICRF to form Cancer Research UK.
Milestones:
- Founded August 1989 as South Beds Friends of ICRF
- First Insurance Industry Golf Day held in Summer 1989.
- Name changed to City of London Friends of ICRF in 1994
- Passed £50,000 raised during early 1997.
- Passed £100,000 raised in early 2000.
- Named changed to City of London Friends of CRUK upon merger of CRC and ICRF (2002)
- Passed £250,000 raised Summer 2004.
- First abseil at Canary Wharf in May 2007.
- Passed £500,000 raised in May 2008 at the second Canary Wharf Abseil.
- September 2009 the group declared its largest (to date) annual profit of more than £163,000.
- Awarded CR-UK’s “Flame of Hope” award in the Community Fundraising category June 2010.
- Held the first Tower Run (Faas Climb) at Heron Tower, the City’s then tallest building October 2011.
- Added to the CR-UK Roll of Honour board at the London Research Institute January 2012.
- Passed £1,000,000 raised at the Battersea Power Station abseil in August 2013.
- Celebrated 25 years of fundraising in August 2014.