We support charities large and small, right across Britain, focusing on those which align most with our business objectives. Many of our people actively support our charity partners, making a real difference in the community. We believe that encouraging charitable giving can also increase employee engagement and productivity.
During the year, Network Rail and our employees gave a total of £1,219,794 to charitable organisations through donations, gifts in kind, employee fundraising and other initiatives described below.
Our charity of choice
In 2010/11, we launched a two-year charity of choice partnership with Cancer Research UK (CRUK). During 2010/11, we contributed £884,613 to CRUK through employee fundraising, payroll giving, gifts in kind (including high profile advertising space at London Bridge station), volunteering time, and corporate donations. This is already close to meeting our two-year partnership target of £1m.
Our partners across Britain
At the start of 2010/11, we reviewed our 30 regional charity partnerships, and chose to continue to fund the 14 partners we believed were most closely aligned to our business and where we saw the greatest impact for us, for the charity and for the community. We continue to provide them with financial contributions and wider support such as employee volunteering time.
Getting involved
To increase participation in charitable activities this year, we made it easier to find information on our policies and how to apply for volunteer leave, matched giving and payroll giving on our Company intranet.
Volunteer leave
We offer up to five days’ paid volunteer leave per year to all employees. This can be used with any registered charity within a set of broad categories that align to our business (such as social inclusion and the environment).
In 2010/11, we widened the scope of these categories to encourage greater use of volunteer leave. This contributed to an increase, with 193 employees volunteering (2009/10: 86 ) for a combined total of 496 days (2009/10: 233). We believe that even more volunteer activities took place without being officially recorded, so capturing accurate and robust data will be an area of focus for the coming year.
Matched giving
During 2010/11, Network Rail matched employee fundraising contributions to the total of £150,000 (2009/10: £100,000) and donated this amount to Cancer Research UK.
Payroll giving
As of 31 March 2011, 3.71 per cent of our workforce was signed up to our Payroll Giving scheme (31 March 2010: 1.68 per cent). In the month of March 2011, our people donated a combined total of £22,340 direct to charity out of their pay.
Since August 2010, ‘Payroll Giving in Action’ has visited our workplaces on 117 occasions to promote the Payroll Giving scheme to our staff, signing up 821 of our people to give to a charity through their payroll.