Charitable partnerships

Argos and Help the Hospices/Irish Hospice Foundation

Argos and Help the Hospices (www.helpthehospices.org.uk) and the Irish Hospice Foundation (www.hospice-foundation.ie) formed a charitable partnership in July 2005 and since that date Argos staff have helped raise more than £1 million for the hospice movement and this figure is forecast be over £1.2m by the end of our partnership. The money has benefited 215 hospices in the UK and the Republic of Ireland.

Argos and their employees have shown the most tremendous support for the hospice movement, embracing the cause with passion and commitment at every level of the company. Their genuine desire to make a difference to the hospice in their local communities, and to Help the Hospices’ work nationally, has made the partnership not only a fantastic success but a real pleasure to be part of. Moreover, with our fundraising goal for this year more than doubled and with such a significant opportunity to raise awareness about hospice care, the legacy of our work together will continue well beyond the two years of our partnership.

David Praill, Help the Hospices, Chief Executive

In November 2005 we launched an innovative new fund raising tool called ‘Tick to Give’. This initiative enables customers to give 20p to Help the Hospices by ticking a box on their selection slips when choosing items in store. By the scheme’s first anniversary in 2006 it had generated over £100,000 and today the figure stands at £175,000 with contributions made from nearly 900,000 customers.

The money raised through ‘Tick to Give’ (together with the GUS Trust donation )will be used to help fund Hospice Information, a multi-media information service provided by Help the Hospices and St Christopher’s Hospice . This is a telephone and web-based service supporting hospices, patients and their families, providing many thousands of people with the information they need to make informed choices about the care available for them and their loved ones. It also offers healthcare professionals access to the most up-to-date information about training and hospice and palliative care service information, helping them to deliver the best possible care and therapies to people with a life-threatening condition.

From July 2007, Argos is proud to be supporting Leukaemia Research (www.lrf.org.uk) as its charitable partner until July 2008, the charity having been chosen by UK Argos employees from a shortlist. Leukaemia Research is the only national charity devoted exclusively to research into Leukaemia, Hodgkin’s, Lymphoma and Myeloma and blood-related cancers. Staff in the Republic of Ireland will support children’s cancer charity Barretstown, which offers fun and challenging activity programmes designed to help children deal with the trauma of serious illness.

Homebase and Marie Curie Cancer Care/Irish Cancer Society

In August 2006 Homebase launched its first two year partnership with Marie Curie Cancer Care (www.mariecurie.org.uk) and the Irish Cancer Society in the Republic of Ireland (www.cancer.ie), under the banner of ‘There’s no place like home’. The object of the partnership is to raise £500,000 to pay for 25,000 hours of home nursing. The charities were chosen in a company-wide staff ballot where 39% of Homebase staff voted to support them.

Staff at Homebase have shown terrific enthusiasm and commitment to fundraising for Marie Curie Cancer Care, raising more than £500,000 in just nine months. That is a fantastic achievement. Thanks to their efforts, we will be able to provide more nursing care for terminally ill patients in their homes across the UK and, with our partners at the Irish Cancer Society in the Irish Republic. That means that more people will have the choice of staying in their own familiar surroundings, with their families, their friends and their pets, until the end of their lives. We look forward to another great year of fundraising in partnership with our friends at Homebase.

Tom Hughes-Hallett, Chief Executive of Marie Curie Cancer Care

Other community investment

The ‘Community Cashback’ scheme enables individual employees to receive top-up funding for their own chosen cause. Colleagues who raise money for the charities that they support can apply to the scheme for a top-up donation from Home Retail Group. Charities which have benefited from this scheme include: Macmillan, Whizz-Kidz, Breakthrough Breast Cancer Care and the Alzheimer’s Society.

Home Retail Group also promotes and supports payroll giving. Of Argos’s 34,000 employees, 10% give through payroll, donating over £16,000 to their chosen charities each month, while 8% of Homebase’s employees have given over £6,000 through their payroll. Argos pays the administration charge and the GUS Trust has match-funded one month’s donations. Since March 2007, Homebase has paid the administration and has match- funded one month’s donations through the support of the GUS Trust. In recognition of the calibre of this scheme, Argos was awarded a Gold Standard Payroll Giving Quality Mark, a scheme funded by the Government and promoted by the Institute of Fundraising and Business in the Community.

Home Retail Group was the first corporate to sign up to the Charities Trusts initiative ‘The Xtra Factor’. This facility allows colleagues to increase their donations by a nominal amount of 3% once a year. Many payroll giving relationships are long standing, and once set up are often not amended. By signing up to ‘The Xtra Factor’ colleagues are ensuring their donations increase regularly, meaning causes they support can cover their own annual cost increases.

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