Ten years of making a difference through the PwC Foundation
In Autumn 2011, we formed the PwC Foundation as the main vehicle for our charitable giving and fundraising activities. That year we also opened our own social enterprise hub, the Fire Station, just by our More London office. Since then, we’ve raised over £13 million for hundreds of good causes, and volunteered around 250,000 hours.
Setting the scene
Our film gives a glimpse of how over the last ten years we have supported hundreds of charities and social enterprises, many of them introduced by our people who are active in their own communities.
Celebrating 10 years
The PwC Foundation, PwC Social Entrepreneur’s Club, and Brigade
View TranscriptHow we helped
A core strand of the PwC Foundation’s work is supporting four strategic partner charities, which allows us to focus our efforts on key issues that matter to us and where we can make a difference.
In addition, we support two long-standing partner charities. Wellbeing of Women funds vital medical research to improve the lives of women and their families, and Beyond Food provides innovative training programmes at our social enterprise bar and restaurant Brigade.
The appetite our people have for volunteering their time and skills is hugely valuable in how we have a positive social impact in communities across the UK. In addition to the coaching, training and problem-solving that individuals and teams deliver throughout the year, a firmwide example (which is even older than the Foundation itself) is One Firm One Day, our annual May volunteering and fundraising day. This year’s - the 14th - involved more of our people than ever before. Some 3,000 volunteers gave 20,000 hours of their time and we raised in excess of £52,000.
“Our first big fundraising initiative was the ’Race for £3m’, for Alzheimers Society, the National Literacy Trust, Groundworks, voted for by staff, and Wellbeing of Women and Beyond Food. In three years, we raised over £3.4m. We went again to a staff vote for our main partner charities after three years, leading to some wonderful relationships with Samaritans, UK Youth, and now Crisis and Hospice UK, voted for during the pandemic and both of which have had a big impact during this time despite the challenges involved.”
Our impact
Through the PwC Foundation, we align our charitable and community contributions with areas that matter to our people, that help us live up to our purpose, and where our expertise can have the most impact. So we’re able to target our efforts to help solve important problems such as social inequality.
And as part of our wider community engagement activities, our people have volunteered in excess of 16,000 hours of training and advice to more than 300 community-focused entrepreneurs, through our Social Entrepreneurs Club. Typically, this support involves mentoring, coaching, masterclasses, networking events and bespoke guidance.
What’s more, we’ve been committed to helping social enterprises grow through our corporate spend: we recently reached our target of spending £10m with social enterprises over six years.
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