Community
investment

Commentary

Context CIS and The Co-operative Bank have reported on their investment in the community for a number of years. During 2003, CIS and the bank managed distinct community investment programmes. Given the creation of central CFS functions - including Corporate Affairs, which manages the community activities of CIS and the bank - management costs and staff volunteering information have been collated for CFS. This CFS information has subsequently been apportioned between the two businesses on an agreed basis. Financial contributions are presented separately for CIS and the bank, with overall community activity also being analysed for each business.

Community investment During 2003, CIS contributed £1,839,540 to 'charitable' causes (2002: £1,659,000), or 3% of pre-tax profit.i The bank contributed £2,916,165 to 'charitable' causes (2002: £3,301,150), or 2.2% of pre-tax profit. Calculated in accordance with Business in the Community's PerCent Standard,ii CIS' contributions consisted of financial support (£803,245), in-kind giving (£81,350), staff time (£231,495) and management costs (£723,450). The bank's contributions consisted of financial support (£2,453,000), staff time (£77,165) and management costs (£386,000). The overall decrease in the value of CFS' donations is due to a one-off payment of £1 million made to
Co-operative Action during 2002 (page 43).  CIS and the bank contribute in excess of the PerCent Standard, which requires a contribution of 1% of pre-tax profit. According to The Giving List,iii on average the UK's leading quoted companies give 0.8% of pre-tax profit to charities, voluntary organisations and community projects.

Impact on society CIS and the bank disclose community investment in line with the London Benchmarking Groupiv (LBG) model. The LBG consists of over 80 leading organisations that have come together to manage, measure and disclose their involvement in the community. The LBG model considers community investment in terms of inputs, outputs and impacts. LBG helps organisations to analyse the inputs of their community activities on the basis of the motivation underpinning the activity.

• Inputs The majority of the bank's community inputs (73%) are classified within 'commercial initiatives in the community'; this is largely due to the fact that customer expenditure on the bank's affinity Visa credit cards, debit and credit cards determines the destination of over 70% of the bank's financial community support. The majority of CIS' community inputs are classified within 'community investment'; this is largely due to community partnerships with CIS' key associations.
• Outputs and impacts LBG encourages organisations to consider three types of short-term outputs: community benefits, business benefits and leverage. Impact measures assess the effect of community activity, and may take several years to emerge fully. CIS and the bank are working with a range of partners to develop systematic measures of the outputs and impacts of community investment. Details of progress to date are denoted by  in the sections below, with further details on CFS' website.v

Financial support and customer involvement

• Affinity partnerships During 2003, the bank issued branded credit cards for 14 national charities/non-governmental organisations.vi Affinity partners receive a donation from the bank for each new card and a margin on the use of the card. During 2003, partners received a total of £1,406,610 (2002: £1,191,150). The charities/non-governmental organisations, in order of income received in 2003, are: The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Oxfam, Amnesty International (UK), Greenpeace, Tearfund, Save the Children, Help the Hospices, WaterAid, ActionAid, Barnardo's, Help the Aged, Children's Aid Direct, Christian Aid and the Ramblers' Association.  For details of the impact of the affinity partner relationship see here for RSPB. For details of the impact of the affinity partner relationship for WaterAid, see here. Details of our other affinity partners are available here.v
• 'Customers Who Care' The bank donates 1.25p per £100 spent by personal customers on the bank's credit and debit cards and by business customers on the bank's Business Visa card to its Customers Who Care campaigns.vii During 2003, a total of £401,000 was spent via this scheme (2002: £365,855). The bank concluded its campaign on Cluster Bombs with a donation to Landmine Action in support of their continuing work. In April 2003, the bank launched its 'Safer Chemicals' campaign with WWF-UK. The campaign calls for persistent and bioaccumulative chemicals to be phased out and replaced with safer alternatives. In January 2004, the bank donated £100,000 to fund the work of three charities campaigning for safer chemicals. In proportion to customer voting, the donation was allocated to Pesticide Action Network UK (£43,000), Friends of the Earth (£37,000) and Surfers against Sewage (£20,000). The remaining funding was allocated to campaign activities; including the biomonitoring of 44 Members of the European Parliament (£76,000) and a national advertising awareness campaign (£200,000).   A full independent analysis of the impact of this campaign is provided on CFS' website.viii
• Key associations CIS has established partnerships with six organisations or key associations: Addaction, Cruse Bereavement Care, Greater Manchester Cares, Manchester Art Gallery, Mind and Whalley Range High School for Girls. A further partnership is being established with Christies for Cancer during 2004. During 2003, these partners received £302,580 of financial support.  Information on the impact of this support for Cruse Bereavement Care is provided below. Impact information for the other key associations is provided on the website.v
  Cruse Bereavement Care CIS entered into a three-year partnership with Cruse Bereavement Care in May 2001. Funding has been provided for a full-time Helpline Worker and for the production of three new publications (over 400,000 copies produced). The helpline provides people with the opportunity to talk with a trained bereavement support worker and to access further support and information. As a direct result of CIS' funding, the following has been achieved: Cruse has been able to answer 7,500 calls from bereaved people; calls to Cruse's helpline have increased by 40% (to 62,000) in 2002-03; a training course for helpline volunteers has been developed and refined; volunteers have been recruited and trained to work on the helpline to help increase capacity; and the availability of free literature has enabled Cruse to distribute its literature more widely, leading to a 40% increase in the number of people contacting Cruse since the start of the partnership (to 158,000 people). In return, support for CIS has included the provision of bereavement training to 40 life claims staff, which helps them to offer improved customer service to bereaved customers.
  
• Grass-roots sport During 2003, CIS provided £190,640 of support for children's sport. Some 1,800 children attended soccer schools; these were organised in conjunction with football clubs. During the year, CIS distributed 210 sets of soccer strips and provided 43 bags of football equipment, which contain all the equipment needed to organise a football match.
  
• Grants and awards During 2003, CIS and the bank provided £176,310 of support through a range of smaller scale grant and award schemes. Schemes include: the Local Donations Scheme, which is available to all CIS district and claims office staff throughout the UK; the Co-operative Community Grant scheme, which enables CIS to provide grants to community groups and charities with a co-operative link; a Community Award fund, which provides matched fundraising for CIS employees and pensioners; and a bank Community Fund, which supports smaller projects reflecting the bank's ethical stance, social improvement projects and the development of co-operatives and credit unions.
  
• Carbon offset programme Each mortgage sold by CIS and the bank includes a commitment to offset a fifth of the carbon dioxide emissions arising from a typical household's energy consumption. During 2003, £125,240 was paid to Climate Care.  Details of the impact of the carbon offset programme are provided here.
  
• Funding diversity The bank has a dedicated Black and Minority Ethnic fund, established in 2001 with a £50,000 grant to the Community Foundation for Greater Manchester (CFGM). The Foundation focuses on funding the development of the operational and fund-raising capacity of each organisation. During 2003, grants were paid to nine community organisations.  Further details of the impact of this funding are available on the website.v

Staff involvement CIS and the bank are committed to providing staff with a range of volunteering opportunities, giving them the chance to make an immediate impact in the community. During 2003, 1,550 staff contributed the equivalent of 2,365 days (2002: 2,626) to community organisations on behalf of CIS and the bank. This volunteering equates to a donation of time worth £308,660, which is apportioned between CIS and the bank on an agreed basis (2002: £385,420). The overall decrease in volunteering compared with 2002 can be attributed to the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, which accounted for 425 days volunteering that year. A large proportion of staff volunteering time (37%) is related to education; for example, CFS is the third largest provider of volunteer school governors through the School Governors' One Stop Shop. Other main activities include support for credit unions (25%) and disability related projects (9%). CIS staff have helped to contribute to another record year for the Greater Manchester Cares Team Challenges, a scheme that links people with community projects in the Manchester area. During 2003, CIS staff completed 22 team challenges with over 230 employees participating. During 2002, the bank launched a programme which enables staff to engage in community volunteering projects for up to three days per year, where participants are willing to donate equivalent time themselves. Projects are chosen that support the bank's ethical stance and provide opportunities for personal development. Details of staff involvement projects, including a new project with WaterAid, one of the bank's affinity partners, are available on the website.ix Whilst CIS and the bank have continued to promote the existing portfolio of volunteering projects to staff, development of new projects was suspended in the latter half of 2003, whilst the community investment activities of CIS and the bank are under review. Staff volunteering will continue to be promoted and supported by CFS during 2004, as part of the new CFS Community Investment Strategy.

Community policy and programmes During 2003, the bank's community programme supported its Ethical Policy and related Community Involvement Policy. The bank focused the majority of its activity on 'commercial initiatives in the community', with substantial cash funding being donated via its affinity Visa credit card schemes, Customers Who Care campaigns and carbon offset programme. By comparison, during 2003, CIS had four stated aims of its community activity: strengthening communities, developing young people, supporting medical research and charities, and providing employee volunteering opportunities that benefit employees and local communities. CIS focused the majority of its activity on 'community investment', related to the further development of relationships with a small number of partners or 'key associations'. A review of the community initiatives and funding practices of CIS and the bank commenced in 2003. This review will result in the development of a new CFS Community Investment Strategy, which will be launched during 2004.

Sustainability value analysis

• Community investment provided 2003, £4,755,705.

Influence and action

Responsible driving More than 3,000 people are killed annually in road traffic accidents in the UK.x In October 2003, CIS re-launched its Responsible Driving Campaign. The campaign focuses on young people; mainly as a consequence of excessive risk-taking, and on uninsured drivers; who account for 1 in 20 road users, despite third-party road insurance being compulsory since the 1930s.

Working with young people CIS co-sponsored The Catherine Kenyon Young Driver of the Year competitionxi for the eighth year. The competition was held nationwide for the first time in 2003. Additionally, CIS worked with Brake,xii to produce a challenging video entitled 'Too Young to Die'; which is designed to educate 15-21 year-olds on the consequences of dangerous driving.

i Profit before tax from CIS' general insurance business (excluding short-term investment fluctuations). This figure was £27.5 million in 2002 and £61.7 million in 2003.
ii www.bitc.org.uk
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iii www.societyguardian.co.uk
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iv www.lbg-online.net
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v www.cfs.co.uk/sustainability2003/impact
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vi www.co-operativebank.co.uk/personal/visa_affinity.html
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vii www.co-operativebank.co.uk/cwc
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viii www.cfs.co.uk/sustainability2003/saferchemicals
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ix www.cfs.co.uk/sustainability2003/projects
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x www.thinkroadsafety.gov.uk/statistics.htm
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xi www.youngdriver.org
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xii www.brake.org.uk
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