57 Companies in Ireland Contributed Over €28 million and 231,668 hours to Charities and Community Groups in 2017

In the past 5 years, employees in Ireland have volunteered a total of 1 million hours to good causes in Ireland

57 top companies in Ireland have contributed over €28 million to charities and community groups last year while employees racked up 231,668 volunteer hours.

The data is featured on an online interactive ‘Business Impact Map‘ which gives a county-by-county breakdown of how 57 companies and their employees supported local community groups and charities during 2017.

The Business Impact Map shows that almost €12 million was given in cash donations; €9.7 million was contributed through in-kind donations and over €5.6 million was raised through employee fundraising. Employees also volunteered over 231,668 hours to local groups and projects during the year.

From 2013-2017, Business in the Community Ireland has calculated that employees in some of Ireland’s largest companies have contributed a total of over 1 million volunteering hours to good causes in the country.

Tomás Sercovich, Business in the Community Ireland Chief Executive said, “Employees want to work for companies that support their volunteering efforts and crucially want to work where their values align with their employer. Companies know that by engaging in tackling social issues it can drive employee engagement and also can attract and retain the best talent as employees now expect their employers to have a community strategy in place as standard”.

Investors and customers are also taking note. According to the  Edelman Trust Barometer results which were announced in January of this year, businesses are now expected to be “an agent of change” with 63 per cent of respondents in Ireland calling on CEOs to “take the lead” on change rather than wait for government to impose it.

Also in January 2018, Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, the world’s largest asset management company announced that the firm intends to support only companies that “serve a social purpose”.  “To prosper over time,” he wrote in a letter to CEOs of the world’s largest companies, “every company must not only deliver financial performance but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”

Sercovich concluded, “An emerging trend we are seeing is businesses collaborating on addressing key social issues. Indeed the Sustainable Development Goals provide a clear directive encouraging companies to work together to enable sustainable development. We encourage all companies in Ireland to strategically focus on the Goals and look at partnership opportunities”.

In 2017, the areas of health, community, education, poverty and youth were the best supported. Over €5m was donated to health with a further €4.5 being donated to communities and another €3.5m going towards education. Elsewhere, social issues of poverty and helping children and young people received sizeable contributions. Almost €3.5m was donated to poverty and over €2.7m given to children and youth.

The Business Impact Map was launched on March 22nd in Dublin sponsored by Tesco Ireland.  The event featured speakers from Fidelity Investments, Boots, Symantec, eir, Deloitte, PM Group, ESB and Momentum Support.

Business in the Community Ireland members represented on the Business Impact Map are:  A&L Goodbody, Abbott Laboratories Ireland, AbbVie, Accenture, Aldi, Amgen Inc, Bank of Ireland Group, Boots Retail (Irl) Ltd, BT, Cook Medical Ireland Ltd., Cork Chamber, Dawn Meats Group, Deloitte, Dublin Bus, eir, EirGrid plc, Energia, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, ESB Group, Fidelity Investments Ireland, Fujitsu Ireland, Gas Networks Ireland, Heineken Ireland, Hovione Ireland, IBM Ireland Ltd., Intel Ireland, Irish Distillers Pernod Ricard, Janssen Pharmaceutical Sciences Ireland UC, Janssen Sciences Ireland UC, Johnson & Johnson Visioncare (Ireland), Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies (Dublin), KBC Bank Ireland, Kildare Village, KPMG, Lidl Ireland, Marks & Spencer (Ireland) Ltd, Mazars, Momentum Support, Musgrave Group, Northern Trust Ireland, Permanent TSB, PM Group, Premier Lotteries Ireland, PwC, Roadbridge, RTE, Servier (Ireland) Industries Ltd., Shell E&P (Ireland) Ltd., SSE Ireland, State Street, Symantec, Tesco Ireland, Transdev Dublin Light Rail Limited, Ulster Bank Group, Virgin Media Ireland, Vodafone Ireland, Zagg International

For further information, contact Moira Horgan, Head of Marketing on mhorgan@bitc.ie or 086 172 2105

Visit the Business Impact Map.

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