# Whitbread employees donate £0.5 million by payroll giving

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2004/11/08/whitbread-employees-donate-05-million-payroll-giving/
- Published: 2004-11-08T00:00:00+00:00
- Author: Howard Lake

Employees of leisure company Whitbread are to donate half a million pounds to UK-
based charities over the next 12 months following record take up of a recent payroll
giving campaign across the country.

Run in conjunction with Charities Trust and Payroll Giving in Action (PGA), nearly
4,000 new Whitbread donors opted to join in the payroll giving scheme during an 
eight week campaign. This represents an average of 70 people signing up every day.

Whitbread now has more than 6,200 employees, nearly 10% of its workforce, pledging
from a minimum of £1 from their weekly salary.

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As part of the launch campaign, Whitbread is double matching and Charities Trust
matching every first donation made, generating further income for its employees’
favourite charities.

Whitbread’s campaign’s success contrasts with the nationwide average of 2% of staff
participating in a payroll giving scheme.

The payroll giving campaign revealed that employees favour locally based UK charities.
Many chose to support multiple charities, with almost half of Whitbread’s employees
opting to donate to more than one charity. More than two out of every three of those
donors chose to support either a cancer or children’s charity. The next most popular
were animal charities.

Women appeared to be more generous than men, with slightly more (56%) opting to 
join in the payroll giving scheme than their male colleagues.

Heather Vasco, Deputy Chief Executive of Charities Trust, said: “this recent campaign
has to be the most successful we’ve seen to date and it’s extremely satisfying to
see such a fantastic response, especially from employees at all levels across the
business.”

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