Social Impact
Our Founder established the Partnership to be a force for good in society. We are driven to make a difference to people’s lives and create positive social impact, using the skills and resources within the Partnership to support where help is needed.
It's important we understand the complexity of societal issues and provide the right support to communities so we can make the most difference.
Our Strategy
Our Founder established the Partnership to be a force for good in society. We are driven to make a difference to people’s lives and create positive social change. We strive for beneficial impact, using the skills and resources within the Partnership to support where help is needed.
We invest in our communities to create opportunities that promote a fairer and more inclusive society. This may be via monetary donations, as gifts ‘in kind’, through strategic relationships with charities that resonate with our brands and customers, or through our Partner volunteering hours and active engagement with local communities.
We are proud of the relationships we have in our shops with local charities and community organisations, strengthened by our local network of Community Leads and Community Liaison Coordinators.
We support our customers and communities in the work they do to enhance the natural world around them through our charitable giving programmes. In this way, we achieve more for the benefit of nature than we can achieve on our own.
Our Partnerships and Programmes
We are proud to run a variety of partnerships and programmes, such as:
Community Matters
We make donations from every John Lewis and Waitrose shop to local charities and community organisations. Across the year we have 3 rounds of funding, each one is a different theme; from Health and Wellbeing to Nature and the environment. Partners working in each branch make the decisions as to which local causes they would like to support. Over the year this gives £1.5Million to local causes.
FareShare Go
Our work with FareShare on surplus food redistribution programme FareShare Go, enables our shops to support thousands of frontline charities. Since 2017 we have donated over 7,100 tonnes of surplus food, which equates to over 16 million meals donated. We have extended the programme to include all Waitrose shops as well as our distribution centres.
The John Lewis Partnership Golden Jubilee Trust (Charity no. 1079195)
The Golden Jubilee Trust is the Partnership’s flagship volunteering programme, through which Partners have the opportunity to volunteer full-time or part-time for up to six months at a charity of their choice while remaining on full Partnership pay and benefits. The Golden Jubilee Trust was set up in 2000 as a registered charity by the John Lewis Partnership with a donation of £5million.
The John Lewis & Partners Foundation (Charity no. 1118162)
The John Lewis & Partners Foundation is an independent charity established in 2007 to benefit communities in the UK and overseas in which John Lewis operates. The Foundation seeks to support projects that invest in vulnerable children and young adults, providing education and skills for meaningful employment
You can find out more about the work of the Foundation in our Ethics & Sustainability Report.
Home-Start UK
The John Lewis Partnership has partnered with Home-Start since 2020 and have worked together to deliver a number of community programmes supporting Home-Start’s network of over 10,000 volunteers and the thousands of the families they support. Examples of our programmes include 2021 Magical Christmas when we provided families with everything they needed for an unforgettable Christmas, as well as our Healthy Happy Home programme. This aims to upskill Home-Start volunteers to support families with everyday struggles including, understanding food and nutrition and basic cooking skills; support with sleep for infants and children; and support for managing household finances.
The Royal Countryside Fund
Waitrose is one of the founding partners of The Royal Countryside Fund, and we have contributed over £1.75million since they were founded by HRH The Prince of Wales in 2010. Our funding has made a significant difference to the charity’s ability to support rural communities and farming families across the UK, including their flagship initiative, the Farm Resilience Programme. From 2022 onwards we are investing £150,000 each year to support two of their core grant programmes, sponsoring projects that promote social cohesion, tackle isolation and rural poverty, and encourage sustainable farming practices for the future..
The John Spedan Lewis Foundation
The John Spedan Lewis Foundation (JSLF) is a national nature charity supported by our Partnership. Established with an endowment in 1964, the Foundation focuses on the personal interests of our founder, John Spedan Lewis (1885–1963), who was a keen naturalist. The Foundation has several charitable objectives, including grant-giving to UK nature charities.
The Trussell Trust
The Trussell Trust and Waitrose have worked together since 2011 when customer donation points were installed in stores for customers to donate ambient goods they had purchased in store to local food banks. There are currently approximately 180 collection points linked to food banks within this network, which provide typically around 600 tonnes of donations each year - a vital and steady supply of food and other items. In addition to this, the Partnership makes an annual donation of over £200,000 to the Trussell Trust to support their network of food banks which provide emergency food and support to people in crisis.
British Red Cross
Over the past fifteen years, we have worked with the British Red Cross and are founding members of the organisation's Disaster Relief Alliance. Through our partnership, we help the British Red Cross to support vulnerable communities, prepare for emergencies and respond immediately whenever help is needed. This includes those affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, the crisis in Ukraine and the flooding in Pakistan.
The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund
Waitrose has supported the Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund since 2010, donating proceeds from the sale of Duchy Organics products of roughly £3m per year. The PWCF mission is to transform lives and build sustainable communities, awarding grants to UK registered non-profit organisations to deliver projects in the UK, Commonwealth and overseas.