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OUR HIGHLIGHTS

• Partnership-wide charitable and community contributions totalled £7.9 million.
• The 10-year anniversary of our Golden Jubilee Trust volunteering secondment scheme, celebrated with an additional investment enabling 10 extra secondments in 2010/11.

OUR CHALLENGES

• Devising and implementing a new Partnership-wide community strategy.
• Measuring and assessing the value and impacts of our community activity.


2.59%

Share of pre-tax profits donated to charitable and community initiatives


OUR COMMUNITY STRATEGY

Being a force for good in the community has always been a part of the Partnership’s vision, and we have a broad and varied range of successful community programmes in place. However, these have developed in an organic way so, since May 2010, we have been working to develop a clearer Partnership-wide strategy. The aim is to define a compelling vision for what community means in an increasingly diversified Partnership so that a strategic direction for all our community activity, now and in the future, can be set. This will seek to engage our Partners both individually and collectively.

It will enable us to:

• work more closely with our communities, address the important issues and leverage our combined expertise
• better demonstrate the value and impact of our community activity
• manage our community investment using the most appropriate resources
• inspire and engage our Partners, customers and suppliers to support our community programmes.

The initial phase of this process (see diagram below), led by the CSR team and supported by our Responsible Business Group and Community Investment Committee (see page 4), will involve a review of our current activity and the vision for community set out by our founder John Spedan Lewis. We also plan to re-examine how that vision is affected by modern developments such as moving into new markets, developing an online presence and joining forces with other businesses. By late 2010, we will have defined what community means at a Partnership level, and set a strategy for maximising our positive community impacts.

Our charitable contributions

At a time when many charitable groups are struggling to raise funds, the Partnership continues to support local charities and community groups and provide opportunities for them to raise the profile of their work. In 2009/10, our Partnership-wide charitable and community contributions totalled £7.9 million, which is equivalent to 2.59% of our pre-tax profits, as measured using the London Benchmarking Group (LBG) model. This is up from £7.5 million (1.85% of pre-tax profits) in 2008/09.


Our Comunity Strategy review proces

1. Research

• Understand where we have come from, where we are now and what the future (external) landscape will look like.

2. Engage

• Understand the commercial context and stakeholder perspectives of our community activity.

3. Evaluate

• Analyse the research and engagement outputs.
• Evaluate the strengths, gaps, threats and opportunities.

4. Define

• Define a clearer vision for community (and a set of underlying principles) which encapsulates current activity and reflects future ambition.

5. Develop

• Develop a guiding framework for planning and managing our community activity which addresses any gaps and actions the opportunities

6. Deploy

• Deploy the framework with supporting materials, as required.
• Review organisational structures required to support delivery.
• Define and agree future targets and measures of success.

7. Communicate

• Work with communications teams to deploy a communication plan at a Partnership, divisional and local level.