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Team Greenbox Architecture go the distance and raise 75K for Parkinson’s
Friday, 8th August 2025
As the City2Surf gears up for another record-breaking year, the team at Greenbox Architecture are lacing up their runners with purpose — and raising serious funds for Parkinson’s research along the way.
With over $75,000 raised and 26 runners heading to the start line, this is more than just a team challenge. For Greenbox, this year’s effort is personal.
We caught up with Alissa Gao from Greenbox to hear how the team has turned passion into progress — and how they’ve brought their whole network along for the ride.
What inspired Greenbox Architecture to take on the City2Surf and support Shake It Up?
It is important for our team to give back to the community, and we try to get involved in charity events where possible.
The team last ran the City2Surf in 2019, with one of our team members wearing a mankini! (I can include a photo of this although it is probably NSFW!).
This year we chose to fundraise for Shake It Up as we have had a few family members of our team receiving Parkinson’s diagnoses recently, including our Managing Director’s wife, who is very dear to many at Greenbox.
It was very important to us that 100% of the funds we raised would go directly towards Parkinson’s research, so Shake It Up was the natural choice for us to support.
How many people from Greenbox are running — and how are they feeling about Heartbreak Hill?
We have 26 people in the team participating in the run, although everyone has participated in or contributed towards our fundraising efforts.
The team is very excited to take on the course next week, although some of us are definitely feeling more confident than others!
There’s a fair few of us that have been plagued by injury, so it may be more of a walk than a run to the finish line.
What kind of fundraising activities did you run — and what worked best?
We held a variety of events in the lead up to the City2Surf, both internally and externally. The highlights included a bake sale, an auction night and an online raffle.
The auction in particular, was a very successful event, with $46K being raised in one evening!
We’re very grateful to have amazing friends, clients and suppliers, who contributed so generously towards our fundraising efforts by donating funds and/or providing items for our auction and raffle.
We also found it helpful to post links to our fundraising page to our Instagram and LinkedIn pages to maximise reach, as well as adding it to our email footer.
What advice would you give others who want to fundraise for Parkinson’s?
What we have learnt on our fundraising journey this year is that passion will get you a long way with motivating donors and sponsors – if they can feel your enthusiasm, they are much more likely to be inspired to contribute!
$75,000 (and counting)
Greenbox’s incredible fundraising — driven by care, creativity, and community — shows what’s possible when purpose meets teamwork.
From NSFW mankinis to corporate bake sales, this team is proving you don’t need to be an elite runner to make an extraordinary impact.
We’re cheering on Greenbox this weekend, an all the other runners running for Shake It Up — thank you for being absolute legends for supporting Parkinson’s research.