£17,000 from dental scrap: our July melt result

The July melt raised £17,000.

That's the most Gold for Kids has ever raised in a single cycle, and it didn't come from one big donor or one grand gesture. It came from crowns, inlays and bits of bridgework dropped into jars on worktops in dental practices across the UK, over months, by people who mostly didn't think much of it at the time.

A few grams here. A part-filled jar there. An old bridge someone found in a drawer while looking for something else. That's what £17,000 is made of, and it's worth saying thank you properly to every practice that sent something in.

How Gold for Kids works

Gold for Kids is a registered charity (number 1190301), and it's run in a slightly unusual way.

We're one hundred per cent volunteer led and run, and nobody draws a salary from donations. The people who chase practices, log the donations and sit on the grant committee all do it around their day jobs, because they want to.

Practices collect precious metal scrap (crowns, inlays, onlays, bridgework and old jewellery patients want to give), and twice a year it goes to a refiner and is melted down. The metal is refined at preferential rates, so more of its value is kept.

In line with sustainable practice, we hold back a small percentage of each melt to cover the cost of running the charity and bringing more practices in. That pays for things like the website, the digital pack and the work of reaching practices who've never heard of us. Everything else goes out in grants to UK children's charities.

We do that deliberately. A charity that gives away every penny it raises and puts nothing into finding new donors gives away less the following year, and less again the year after. Holding a little back is how £17,000 becomes more than £17,000 next time.

What happens to the money next

The money now goes into our grant fund. Charities working with UK children in poverty, hardship or crisis apply to us, and our grant committee scores every application against three things: how well it fits our mission, the impact it will have on children and families, and whether it will still be doing good once the money runs out.

The committee meets at the end of October, and grants are paid in mid-November. When they are, we'll publish exactly which charities received what, and what they're doing with it. Not a general statement about helping children, but the actual names and the actual amounts.

The next melt is already filling up

Collecting for the January melt has already started. Two dates are worth putting somewhere you'll see them:

• Friday 15 January 2027: the date your scrap needs to be with us

• Sunday 31 January 2027: the melt

If your practice isn't part of this yet, it asks very little of you. Register, download the digital pack, print the labels and stick them on a jar, and that's your collection jar sorted. When it's full, post it to us. There are no targets, no fundraising events and nothing to organise.

Register your practice or, if you're already collecting, here's how to send your scrap.

Thank you for everything you sent in July.

The Gold for Kids Team