Community Spirit - Spreading the bounty

Dec 11 2006 By James Barton, The Journal

How companies manage their core business and at the same time add social, environmental and economic value has become an overriding priority in the 21st Century. James Barton looks at how one multi-national has met those challenges.

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Proctor & Gamble has met the challenges of balancing business and social value head-on, pledging to build a £1m charitable trust with the Community Foundation serving Tyne and Wear and Northumberland.

P&G has one of the longest standing and largest funds with the Community Foundation, a registered charity set up in 1988 with the aim of making it easier for successful people and organisations to support voluntary groups throughout the region.

It now manages more than 130 funds and last year awarded more than £10m to 2,500 community groups on behalf of donors.

P&G fund manager at the Community Foundation Kate Bradley said: "P&G has actually donated nearly £500,000 to 286 voluntary groups in the North-East since the fund was set up in 1998.

"The idea is that P&G grow a £1m fund with us by 2008, the interest from which is used to support various community works throughout the region."

It recently awarded a grant of £2,000 to Fawdon Community Association in Newcastle which means a playgroup has been able to take on two new workers.

Helen Wilding, who runs the playgroup, said: "By law we have to have one member of staff to every four children, so the two extra workers mean we have been able to take on eight new children, some of whom have special needs, helping us to provide a vital service to local families."

Andrew Graydon, P&G's Community Matters co-ordinator at its Newcastle Technical Centre, said: "The playgroup is a huge asset to the Fawdon community, giving mums in the area a well-earned break and their children a great start in life."

Schools in Darlington, Newcastle and Gateshead have been taking part in the Seed to Saw programme, run by The Great North Forest, to which P&G has given £1,320 through its Community Foundation fund.

The Seed to Saw programme teaches children about the process of sowing, harvesting and processing wood, making this chain part of the curriculum and helping to make links between schools and the timber industry. The Great North Forest's lifelong learning co-ordinator Kate Jones said: "It is helping us fund vital parts of the programme, such as trips for pupils to forests, sawmills and finally timber retailers.

"P&G's contribution has helped scores of pupils, from both primary and secondary schools, take part in the programme."

As well as the Community Foundation, P&G staff have been directly involved in fundraising, generating £5,000 for an Aids hospital in Africa in response to a colleague's experience of Aids orphans in Malawi.

Elaine McCulloch, who works in the accounts department at P&G on the Cobalt Business Park in North Tyneside, put forward the hospital's Aids/HIV programme for the company's annual fundraising push after her grandmother Shena Dougall volunteered as a nurse in Ekwendeni Hospital in northern Malawi.

Elaine, her grandmother and the rest of the family visited the hospital two years ago and she was so touched by the plight of the local people, and particularly the children orphaned by Aids, that she decided to try to help them in whatever way she could.

P&G, with its partners on site Jones Lang LaSalle, Hewlett Packard and IBM, raised the money through a range of activities. 

They braved the chill lathering up colleagues' cars in mid-winter, a charity poker tournament and  accountants at P&G also swapped their suits for school uniform for the day to help the cause.

P&G community matters co-ordinator at Cobalt Anne Perrin said: "We had a fantastic response to our fundraising activities.

"Raising this money has brought a real sense of community, as well as a lot of fun.  We felt that the Ekwendeni Aids programme was a truly worthy cause and that the money we had raised would go to help people who suffer more than any of us can imagine."