What began with a local business supporting a CCRF fundraiser has grown into a new kind of partnership, with GOLD officially launched at Bolt Coffee Roasters in Midland.
Coffee, conversation and a shared commitment to helping kids and young people affected by cancer came together at Bolt Coffee Roasters on Thursday 24 September, as the Child Cancer Research Foundation officially launched GOLD.
Created in collaboration with Bolt Coffee Roasters, GOLD turns something many households and businesses already buy into an ongoing way to support childhood cancer research and young people beyond treatment. But the story behind the new blend is about much more than coffee. It is also about what can happen when relationships with the businesses that support CCRF, are given the opportunity to grow. Buy your bag of GOLD.
CCRF CEO Andrea Alexander and Head of Development Michele Dalton joined the Bolt team for the launch, alongside Steve Catania MLA, Member for Midland, and Hon Klasey Hirst MLC, who both came along to support the collaboration. Steve’s presence carried an especially personal significance given his family’s own experience of childhood cancer, as well as his connection to the local Midland community, while Klasey has been a longstanding supporter of CCRF and our annual Keep the Flame Alive Quiz Night.
Rebekah Sheedy from the office of Hon Matthew Swinbourn MLC also joined the morning, continuing a relationship strengthened during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month through CCRF’s recent awareness activation at WA Parliament.
A relationship that started with a Quiz Night
Long before GOLD appeared on the shelves at Bolt, Bolt Coffee Roasters was already part of the CCRF community through its support of our annual Keep the Flame Alive Quiz Night.
That history made the launch particularly meaningful. In the lead-up to this year’s Quiz Night, CCRF Head of Development Michele Dalton had been approaching businesses for support: donating prizes, sponsoring activities, buying tables and helping raise funds. It prompted a different question. Instead of only considering what businesses could do for CCRF, what if CCRF could create opportunities that also supported the businesses that had chosen to stand behind us?
Bolt became the inspiration for that thinking after a conversation with co-owner Katie Saldaneri about the realities facing small businesses and why Bolt had continued supporting CCRF. The conversation reinforced something simple, but important: strong partnerships should not be defined only by what a business can give to a charity. They can also be about what two organisations can build together, and how they can support one another.
From that thinking, CCRF’s Corporate Impact Partnership concept began to take shape, with GOLD becoming its first opportunity to put the idea into practice. Remarkably, only around six weeks separated those early conversations from the finished bags of GOLD sitting on Bolt’s shelves.
Buy your bag of GOLD
For CCRF CEO Andrea Alexander, the collaboration represents an important evolution in the way organisations and businesses can work together.
“This isn’t simply a business donating to a charity. It’s two organisations bringing different strengths to the table and creating something together that benefits both, while generating ongoing support for childhood cancer research and young people beyond treatment.”
Andrea said this kind of sustainable collaboration was increasingly important as the ways people choose to support charities continue to change.
“We want the businesses that support CCRF to know that we value their success too. Bolt Coffee Roasters have already been a generous supporter of CCRF, and we’re incredibly proud to now stand beside them as a genuine partner.”
More than a fundraising total
The connections between GOLD and the Keep the Flame Alive Quiz Night were particularly visible on launch day.
Steve Catania MLA and Hon Klasey Hirst MLC have both supported the Quiz Night, and CCRF used the occasion to recognise that support following another successful event in August. The 2026 Keep the Flame Alive Quiz Night raised $50,062.32, bringing the event’s cumulative fundraising total since 2017 to more than $251,000.
Next year will mark the 10th Keep the Flame Alive Quiz Night, an important milestone for an event that has become about far more than its fundraising total.
Across almost a decade, Keep the Flame Alive has brought businesses, community leaders, supporters and friends of CCRF together around a shared purpose. Businesses that initially donated a prize have returned year after year. Introductions have become conversations, conversations have become collaborations, and relationships have continued well beyond the night itself.
GOLD is now a tangible example of what one of those relationships can become.
For Michele, that reciprocal relationship is fundamental to what GOLD represents.
“When you buy GOLD, you’re supporting an independent local WA business that supports our Foundation, and at the same time your purchase helps CCRF fund childhood cancer research and support young people beyond treatment.
“We help a local business grow. They help us continue our work, and our community gets to be part of it simply by choosing where they spend their money.”
A piece of CCRF history returns
There was another full-circle moment woven into the launch.
A section of the giant gold ribbon used when CCRF achieved a Guinness World Record at Langley Park in 2014 returned for the occasion, this time becoming part of the ceremonial ribbon cutting to officially launch GOLD.
Twelve years ago, thousands of Western Australians came together around that ribbon to raise awareness of childhood cancer. Bringing it back for the launch connected an important piece of CCRF’s history with a new way for the WA community to support its work.
The methods may change, but the reason behind them has not. Kids and families have ALWAYS been our reason.
An everyday purchase with greater purpose
At the heart of GOLD, is a deliberately simple proposition. Coffee is something many households, workplaces, cafés and businesses already buy, so supporting CCRF does not necessarily need to mean finding room in the budget for another donation.
Instead, it can be as simple as changing the coffee you already purchase.
Choose GOLD for home, make it the next coffee order for the workplace, give it to a client or friend, or put it in the hopper at your café. Each of those everyday purchases helps support childhood cancer research and young people beyond treatment through CCRF’s Adolescent & Young Adult Cancer Survivorship Program, while also supporting the independent WA business that helped create it.
As Michele explained at the launch, one bag might seem small, but households, workplaces, businesses and cafés making the switch can turn those individual purchases into something much bigger over time.
That is also why Brewing Hope became the natural tagline for GOLD.
From an idea to something real
One of the most rewarding parts of launch morning was seeing the idea move from concept to reality. Guests shared coffee, talked about the thinking behind GOLD and bought bags to take home. What had been a conversation only six weeks earlier was now a product sitting on the shelves of the very business whose support had helped inspire it.
The morning was intentionally relaxed, creating space for genuine conversations about childhood cancer research, life beyond treatment and the role businesses and communities can play in supporting both. It also gave CCRF the opportunity to recognise some of the people who have continued to stand alongside the Foundation and to celebrate what can grow from those relationships.
For the Bolt Coffee Roasters team, the launch represented the next chapter in a relationship that began through community fundraising and has now developed into an ongoing collaboration. Katie Saldaneri, Brooke Whittingham, Beth Hickson, Caileigh and the wider Bolt team worked alongside CCRF to take GOLD from an initial idea to a finished product in just weeks.
Andrea also acknowledged the speed and collaboration behind bringing the concept to life, thanking the Bolt team for embracing the idea, and Michele for developing and driving the concept from conversation to launch.
GOLD is now brewing
GOLD has been created as an ongoing collaboration, giving households and businesses a simple way to make support for childhood cancer research part of something they already do.
CCRF and Bolt hope to see the blend find its way into homes, workplaces, cafés and gifts across WA. For workplaces and businesses in particular, it provides an opportunity to take an existing expense and make it work harder, without creating another fundraising activity or asking staff and customers for another donation.
As Andrea reflected at the launch:
“We’re excited about what GOLD can become, and about what this approach to partnership could mean for CCRF into the future.”
Most importantly, every bag creates another opportunity to support the work that has been at the heart of CCRF for 46 years: helping create better outcomes for kids and young people affected by cancer.
So when the coffee runs out at home, or it is time to place the next workplace order, consider making the switch. Support a local WA business, that supports kids with cancer.
GOLD. Brewing Hope. Purchase yours today!
