Waitrose to donate £2.2 million to 6,840 local charities
Howard Lake | 22 July 2008 | News
A new community scheme from supermarket Waitrose will donate £2.28 million to 6,840 local charities and good causes over the next 12 months, as chosen by its customers and employees.
The ‘Community Matters’ initiative will allocate £1,000 a month to each of Waitrose’s 190 branches to distribute amongst three local community projects.
To be considered for a donation, good causes and charities should contact their local Waitrose branch store. Partners (Waitrose employees) will then vote which three causes to support each month at their branch’s ‘PartnerVoice’ forum, a means of voicing opinion on branch issues. Customers and Partners can also put forward the names of organisations they would like their local branch to support by filling out a leaflet in store.
Shoppers then get to help decide how the sum is divided amongst the three selected organisations. They will be given a token at the checkout, which they can place in one of three boxes at the store exit, each allocated to a different cause. The amount a cause receives is directly proportional to the number of tokens they receive from customers.
The scheme was originally piloted in Witney, Wokingham, Newbury, Buckingham and Henley.
www.waitrose.com/branches/index.aspx
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.