Our Communities

Breast Cancer Now is the UK’s largest breast cancer charity. It funds critical research into the disease and has a clear ambition – to make sure no women die from breast cancer by 2050 or sooner. We’ve worked with the charity since 2001, raising an amazing £33.6 million through product sales and employee and customer fundraising. Together we also developed our inclusive post-surgery lingerie range, to allow women to be comfortable whilst they rest and recover.

No one should face cancer alone. That’s why Macmillan Cancer Support is there for everyone affected by cancer, from diagnosis through treatment and beyond. We’re proud to be the headline sponsor of the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning. With the help of Colin the Caterpillar, our employees take on challenges and fundraising, pulling out all the stops to inspire and involve customers too. Since 2010 we have raised £23 million to help fund vital Macmillan services in local communities across the UK.

The Royal British Legion is at the heart of a national network that supports our Armed Forces community. For more than 100 years they have provided support to serving and ex-serving personnel and their families. Since 2012 M&S have sold The Poppy Collection (primarily a range of poppy jewellery), giving all profits to the charity. Through this, Sparks, and various other initiatives M&S has raised over £9 million to date. These funds support the Royal British Legion to run services such as Admiral Nurses, who give support members of the armed forces community living with dementia, and their families. We are also pleased to welcome Royal British Legion volunteers in M&S stores or forecourts to sell paper poppies every Remembrance.

Shelter exists to defend the right to a safe home. They offer advice and support services for those facing housing issues and homelessness, fund research, and campaign to change the housing system. We have partnered with Shelter since 2005, raising £14.6 million through various activities including our Shelter Festive Food-on-the-Move collection, Sparks partnership, and clothing sample donations, helping in part to fund calls answered by Shelter’s free national helpline.

We raised over £8.4million fo he NHS Charities Together during the pandemic through a donation from our Rainbow Sale, our 'All in this Together' T-shirts and rainbow bags. NHS Charities Together works with a network of over 24 NHS charities across the UK to provide the extra support needed to care for NHS staff, patients and communities. We also helped to kick start the Neighbourly Community Fund to support local communities with much needed grants. 

In response to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, we acted quickly to support NGOs providing crucial aid to those affected by the war. As a business, we offered a £1.5m package in support, including a £500,000 donation to UNHCR, 12,000 coats and jackets provided through UNHCR and £500,000 made available to match colleague fundraising for UNICEF. To date, colleagues have raised over £130,000. We activated customer donations in store and online for UNICEF, which raised more than £1.9m. 

Each of our stores can select one local charity to fundraise for across the year. We also offer payroll giving and matched funding to colleagues.

We know how important community involvement is to our colleagues, so everyone is entitled to one day'’s paid leave per year to volunteer at their choice of organisation. We also run company-wide volunteer weeks, where 4,000–5,000 colleagues volunteer with approximately 450 community organisations up and down the country. Projects range from organising tea parties for local elderly people, to revamping community gardens. Colleagues also give back through school tours, school talks, and wider town centre engagement.

We believe M&S food is too good to go to waste. We work with Neighbourly to link our stores up with a network of more than 3,000 community partners who collect daily donations of surplus food. Donations include fresh fruit and vegetables, grocery items and bakery goods – in 2025, we hit the milestone of donation the equivalent of 100m meals to people in need.

In 2017 we delivered a pilot to understand how M&S can play a deeper role in supporting local communities. We concentrated on ten places across the UK from Glasgow to Liverpool, and Rochdale to Newham. We trialled new initiatives and learned about taking a ‘place-based’ approach to solving key challenges in the community through working with local authorities, civil society and other businesses.

Across the M&S international business, our partners are active in supporting their local communities – from India, to the Czech Republic and Greece, as well throughout the franchise partner network.