Supporting our people
Many of our employees give up their own time to champion a broad range of charities and local organisations. They raise funds, volunteer and make donations from their own salaries. At M&S we actively support these people and want to celebrate their success.
Matching our peoples’ fundraising
Every year we set aside funds to match the charitable fundraising that our people do out of working hours. We encourage great teamwork between colleagues through the programme's criteria which requires a minimum of five employees to be fundraising together for the same organisation- they are all our local heroes!
Chester – Awarded £3,000 for their charity from our Matching Funds
The team at Chester store set themselves a target to raise £12,000 for B-Positive, to help build an extension at the Countess of Chester Hospital to improve facilities for patients undergoing chemotherapy, immunotherapy and other treatments for cancers and blood disorders. However in eleven months they raised a staggering £25,000! This made Chester store’s donation the single biggest donation from a local company - a fantastic achievement.
The members of the fundraising group are Jean, Shirley, Sharon, Mary, Jan, Debbie, Cheryl, June, and Heather.
Douglas, Isle of Man – Awarded £3,000 for their charity from our Matching Funds
Angie from Douglas thought up an innovative ‘Bra Dash’ event, where over 250 men and women dashed through the main store wearing bras (in the presence of local radio and television). The event raised an enormous £12,000 for Breakthrough Breast Cancer, almost half of the fantastic £28,647 total they have raised in the last two years. The team at Douglas store say they are proud of the ‘team building’ skills they have developed, at the same time as "learning to have fun and doing something good for others."
The five members of the fundraising committee are Angie, Kath, Carol, Mary, Pat and Hilary.
Shoreham – Awarded £3,000 for their charity from our Matching Funds
The Shoreham store fundraising team spent over 100 hours raising £3,400 for Breakthrough Breast Cancer during the last year. Their amazing fundraising efforts have been recognised not only by their colleagues, but have also been given some impressive recognition in the community when they were recently filmed with Hove Football Club for the BBC’s South Today news programme.
The leading members of the fundraising committee are Kath, Bev, Silvana and Karen.
Give As You Earn – Payroll Giving
Supporting our people to help charities they care about in a tax free way.
Many of our employees like to support their favourite charities financially as well as giving time through voluntary work and fundraising.
Give As You Earn (Payroll Giving) is the most tax-effective way to donate to the charities you care about.
Donations are taken from your salary before you pay income tax, so instead of the tax going to the tax man, it goes to the charity/charities you choose.
Over 2,800 of our employees take advantage of the scheme annually, donating over £250,000 to over 300 charities.
M&S were proud to be supporters of National Giving Week 16-22 October >>
Payroll Giving Quality Mark
Rewarding employers for fostering a culture of giving in the workplace, by promoting payroll giving.
This is a scheme that rewards organisations for making payroll giving available to employees. Awards range from receiving a quality mark if a GAYE scheme is introduced onto bronze, silver and gold for those who demonstrate that they are encouraging giving in the work place by getting employees involved.
We have succeeded in engaging between 5% and 9% of our people and have therefore been presented with a Silver Quality Mark Award!
Sharing the Caring the Payroll Giving arm of CAF (Charities Aid Foundation) are now visiting each of our stores and HO locations annually in order to promote the scheme.
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