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Our communities

Our Partners make a positive difference to the communities where we do business


Being a force for good in the community has always been a part of the Partnership’s vision. And it’s not just local people who benefit from our fundraising, volunteering and community initiatives. Our Partners gain new skills and experiences too, boosting their confidence and helping to build their sense of pride.


Commitments

Contribute at least 1% of pre-tax profits to community initiatives.

Using the LBG model, develop processes and tools to identify and measure the outputs and impacts of sizeable community investment projects and our community programmes.

Provide support to overseas disasters through the British Red Cross.

Increase the number of Golden Jubilee Trust secondments in line with business growth.


£7.5 million Partnership-wide community contributions in 2008/09 (equivalent to 1.85% of pre-tax profits)


Charitable contributions

In 2008/09, the value of our Partnership-wide charitable and community contributions was over £7.5 million, which is equivalent to 1.85% of our pre-tax profits, as measured using the London Benchmarking Group (LBG) model. This is up from £6.2 million (1.63% of pre-tax profits) the previous year.

An online community investment database is widely used by John Lewis and we are exploring ways to further improve the measurement and reporting of the value and impacts of our community activity, as well as how we can extend the database to Waitrose.

Partner-led activities

Our Partners decide how the Partnership gives money and time to the community. Individuals also make tax-free donations to charities, directly from their pay, through a Give As You Earn scheme.

Waitrose shops supported many local charities through Community Matters (see page 20) while John Lewis Partners have raised over £95,000 for the division’s Charity of the Year, which in 2009 is Contact the Elderly, who host monthly tea parties for elderly people through a national network of volunteers. Fundraising activities ranged from Bollywood dancing and Indian food at an Asian evening in Leicester to pushing a lorry three miles down the King’s Road in London. We also hope to complement our fundraising initiatives with a new Partner volunteering programme to support the charity, to create a new group in every location where we have a shop, manufacturing unit or distribution centre, and foster long-lasting links with our own retired Partners.

Corporate Partners raised over £38,000 for their Charity of the Year COSMIC (Children of St Mary’s Intensive Care). The money will be used to refurbish the unit’s Parents’ Room, to relaunch its accommodation service and to publish a Parents’ Guide.

International rescue

We continue to make significant donations to emergency overseas relief and donated £50,000 to the British Red Cross Disaster Fund, which makes monies available at short notice for emergency help. During 2008/09, the Fund provided immediate, often life-saving, aid for victims of the Myanmar cyclone, a major earthquake in China, hurricanes in the Caribbean and those feeling the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.