The face of corporate charity partnerships has changed dramatically over the last 10 years.   

Partnerships no longer reflect out-of-tune carol singers knocking doors and expecting cash from disgruntled and semi interested householders, who in turn just want to be seen to be ‘doing the right thing’ by handing over cash. They’re much more about mutual satisfaction - businesses want to support charities to sing in tune, they want to invite them in to practice and they want to support them on the next doorstep when the song being sung for them has finished. Charities want to know what types of songs will open the corporate door and want to still be feeling the effects from the first house when they’re five houses down the street.

But enough analogies for now...

Deloitte is in the process of nominating new charity partners for the next three years. Charities we hope to have a real and lasting impact with – like we have had with our existing partners. For the last three years we have had phenomenal success with our National Charity Partners, Cancer Research UK, Help for Heroes and CHILDREN with CANCER UK. In total, we have raised more than £1.8m, provided more than 3,000 hours of pro-bono support and over 2,000 volunteers have been engaged across a range of projects, activities and initiatives. Whilst these numbers are impressive it’s the stories behind them that show the real impact we have had.        

For Help for Heroes this means Tedworth House - their flagship Personnel Recovery Centre. Deloitte has worked at the heart of the project, providing almost 3,000 hours of strategic and operational support through Drivers Jonas Deloitte, Consulting – Technology, Strategy and Operations. Tedworth House has, to date, supported over 350 wounded soldiers, received a total of nearly 9000 visits, and has managed over 130 referrals to its Support Hub.  

For Cancer Research UK, this means Healthy Lifestyles - a unique project we worked in partnership to create and pilot. Healthy Lifestyles provides a health messaging toolkit for a corporate audience and to date more than 50 Deloitte people have been trained and delivered presentations, enabling over 500 Deloitte employees to enjoy a healthier lifestyle in order to reduce cancer risk. CRUK have already used the blueprint to engage with corporate partners and the success of the project was recently confirmed with us winning the Charity Times ‘Consultancy of the Year’ award.  

For CHILDREN with CANCER UK, this means our support for a new programme of national clinical trials which over the next five years is expected to treat 2,500 children and young people with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (ALL).     

So... whilst we have 6 months left of the current partnerships we have started the process to nominate our new Charity Partners. The challenge for us all is to make sure we continue to build on the lessons we have learnt and the momentum we have gained from the existing partnership – this means that from the start of the new partnership we are getting under each other’s skin, sharing our strategic goals and taking the time to understand each other’s relative strengths, skills and cultures... we want to make sure that through our experience, skills and insight we make a real and lasting impact – an impact that continues to prove that our charity partnerships are about much more than just cash!

Phil Scott
Phil joined Deloitte in February 2006 and is currently Impact and Reporting Manager within the Corporate Responsibility team.