Charity of the year
Charity of the year
Our approach
We channel our colleagues’ and customers’ incredible fundraising efforts into a Group-wide charity partnership. Our colleagues are crucial to the success of this partnership, so it makes sense that they have the final say on which charity we support. They vote for a partner every two years – usually selecting charities that demonstrate how our fundraising support can make a tangible impact at local level.
We raise funds for charities in several different ways:
- National fundraising campaigns
- Colleagues’ fundraising activities
- Cause-related marketing
- Sale of charity branded promotional items
- ‘Tick to give’ and ‘Round it up’ – two point of sale schemes in Argos that allow customers to round up their bill and donate to our charity partner
We also support our charity partners with 'in kind' support, through volunteering, product donations, purchase discounts and a range of awareness raising and educational activities for colleagues and customers.
What we’ve done
Through our two-year partnership with British Heart Foundation and Heart Children Ireland we’ve raised more than £3 million, funding over 700 defibrillators in the UK and a speech and language therapist at Our Lady's Children’s Hospital,Crumlin, Dublin.
In July 2010, more than 50% of our colleagues voted for a new charity partner, with 30% of them choosing Teenage Cancer Trust (TCT), which currently provides 17 specialist units for young people with cancer. All the money raised through our partnership over the next two years will help to fund another 18 units in the UK and one in Ireland – making a TCT unit available to all teenage cancer patients.
To build colleagues’ support for our partnership with TCT and provide a focal point for their fundraising activities, each of our stores, offices and distribution centres are linked to an existing or planned TCT unit.
Local community groups also benefit from our national charity partnership, because we reward our top fundraising stores and sites with charity gift cards which they can use to donate to local good causes. We also share our charity ‘successes’ with customers and thank them for their help via in-store television, radio and posters.
To date, our colleagues and customers have already raised more than £1 million for TCT – five months ahead of our target. As a result, we’ve now increased our two-year target from £2 million to £2.5 million.
Volunteering
We actively encourage our colleagues to develop new skills and broaden their experience and knowledge by volunteering to work for our charity partner. As a result, TCT continues to benefit from the expertise our colleagues from sales and marketing, IT, website development and other areas of the business can provide.
Colleagues from our human resources teams are also helping young cancer patients to develop the skills needed to progress from education to employment – running CV writing workshops, mock interviews and acting as personal mentors. Some colleagues have also turned out to collect donations at TCT events, while others are planning to provide ‘garden make overs’ for patients and their families.
Community partnership
Community partnership
Our approach
We actively support a number of charities and community groups through a combination of cash, gifts in kind and volunteering. This local investment benefits the recipients, helps to engage our colleagues and enhances our corporate reputation.
What we’ve done
We donated over £2.8 million to charities in 2010/11 – supporting our charity partnership and a number of other charities and community groups.
Payroll Giving
Over 10% of our colleagues participate in the CompanyPayroll Giving scheme, which has now generated donations of £398,000 for close to 400 good causes selected by colleagues. We pay all administration costs of the scheme, so every penny goes directly to a charity and we also match every colleague’s first monthly donation.
Community Cashback
We’ve donated more than £30,000 through our Community Cashback scheme, boosting our colleagues’ fundraising efforts for local and national charities or community groups.
Community Prize Fund Draw
Using a simple ‘nomination and application’ process on our website we donate gift cards worth £250, £150 or £100 (redeemable in Argos and Homebase stores) to three local charities or community groups every month.
Living Made Easy
We help provide practical advice for people with disabilities by funding the Living Made Easy website in partnership with the Disabled Living Foundation.
InKind Direct
This year we’ve donated stock with an estimated retail of over £140,000 through InKind Direct – benefiting close to 700 charities. The vast majority of beneficiaries are small, local groups who work at a grass root level.
Volunteering
Our volunteering policy gives every colleague the opportunity to take two paid volunteering days off a year. We encourage colleagues to work together in groups in their communities through project based activity for local good causes and we subsidise the materials they need in order to make a difference.
Community activity in Asia
Colleagues at our offices in Asia have been supporting their local communities with donations of product samples and computers to local schools. Our offices also work closely with local agencies to support youth employment initiatives in the area. And colleagues will have their say on how they would like to continue to support their communities, and what role volunteering could play in this support, in a survey currently being run across our offices in China.
Broader community support has been provided with donations to Unicef and to the WWF through their support of the “No Shark Fin” policy.