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Good week for corporate fundraising partnerships

Fundraising | Becky Slack | 1 Mar 2008

Boots is to introduce payroll giving across the whole of its business, in an effort to raise a potential £390,000 a year for various charities.

The announcement comes in the same week that the British Red Cross declared that its Charity of the Year partnership with Tesco raised a record-breaking £4.4m, and Oxfam said its new arrangement with M&S had generated £265,000 in its first month.

The Boots initiative will see the pharmacy retailer provide all its 65,000 staff with the opportunity to sign up for payroll giving. Boots has also promised to make a one-off donation of £10 to each participating employee’s chosen charity.

Boots aims to reach the Gold Quality Mark, awarded to those companies with more than 10 per cent of its staff giving via the mechanism. Reaching this standard will have the potential to raise more than £390,000.

Workplace Giving is to manage the scheme, which includes educating new staff about payroll giving, using payslips to notify people of their donations to date and motivating new donors to sign up using incentives such as competitions to win up to £1,000.

The £4.4m raised by the British Red Cross and Tesco is the largest sum ever raised through the supermarket’s Charity of the Year fundraiser and is also claimed to be the largest amount ever raised through a single corporate partnership.

Money was raised via staff fundraising (pictured), donations on products sold in store, collection tins, recycling schemes, Clubcard mailings and a Christmas charity single featuring Katie Melua and the late Eva Cassidy. All the money raised will be used to support local emergency services in the county it was collected in.
 
“This partnership more than doubled original goals and topped all previous Tesco Charity of the Year records by more than 25 per cent,” said Mark Astarita, director of fundraising at the British Red Cross.

“The success can be attributed to the innovative and very profitable cause-related marketing initiatives; the dedicated account management structure and network of community fundraisers across the UK and, most importantly, the motivation harnessed through the ‘locally raised, locally spent’ message that galvanised Tesco staff and Red Cross volunteers to raise money knowing it would be spent in their local communities.”

Meanwhile, Oxfam staff are also celebrating following the news that the M&S and Oxfam Clothes Exchange has raised £265,000.

The Clothes Exchange provides a £5 M&S voucher to people who donate one or more M&S-labelled item. So far more than 80,000 people have taken advantage of the scheme, which in turn has seen spending increase across Oxfam’s 750 charity shops. In the first week of the initiative, from 4 to 10 February, sales in Oxfam shops were 17 per cent higher than the same period in 2007.

On average, its shops generate around £80m of income a year. 

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Directory: British Red Cross | Oxfam
Who's Who: Becky Slack