Social Impact

Helping people in our communities to thrive

Performance highlights

£2.6m

donated through Community Matters this year, over £50m since launch.

Green tokens

£2.6m donated through Community Matters this year, over £50m since launch.

6.4m

meals donated via FareShare this year, 30m since our collaboration began.

Food poverty

6.4m meals donated via FareShare this year, 30m since our collaboration began.

In 2025

we celebrated contributing £50 million to good causes from sales of Waitrose Duchy Organic products since 2009.

Duchy Organic landmark

In 2025, we celebrated contributing £50 million to good causes from sales of Waitrose Duchy Organic products since 2009.

1,100+

Partner secondments to charities granted by the Golden Jubilee Trust during its 25 years.

Trust’s 25th anniversary

1,100+ Partner secondments to charities granted by the Golden Jubilee Trust during its 25 years.

We’re committed to helping people in our communities to thrive, ensuring everyone, regardless of background, has the resources, opportunities and support network to fulfil their potential. Through our strategy, we focus on three areas of particular importance to our Partnership: Food Poverty, Education and Work, and Community Support.

To achieve our aims, we work with large and small charities, both directly and through our John Lewis Partnership Foundation. At a national level, the charities we work with include British Red Cross, the Royal British Legion, Action for Children, Look Good Feel Better, FareShare, Trussell, Grocery Aid, the Royal Countryside Fund and the King Charles III Charitable Fund.

Community support

Be at the heart of our communities, supporting local charities and community groups

Food poverty

Fight hunger in the communities we serve

Education and work

Help people to access learning opportunities and workplaces in communities where we operate

Progress

We’re working to strengthen our social impact by developing ways to measure the connections we create between people and communities. The launch of the John Lewis Partnership Foundation brings together our charitable efforts under one umbrella, supporting nature, employability and care-experienced individuals. We continue to support national causes through donations and fundraising, helping to make a positive difference across society.

Expand

King Charles III Charitable Fund

Every year, we make a contribution to the Fund from sales of Duchy Original products. In 2025, we provided £4m and surpassed £50m in total since we began selling Duchy Original products in 2009.

Royal British Legion

In 2025, thanks to the generosity of our customers and Partners, Waitrose and John Lewis stores combined to raise £520k for the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal. This valuable support helps the charity organise vital activities, such as recovery courses that enable veterans to regain their independence.

Community cooks

This year, we launched our £200,000 Community Cooks programme working with FareShare to run cookery skills courses for charities and community groups. In its first year, this initiative will enable 16 groups to cook for their communities, serving up to 100 meals each time and helping them deliver greater impact with the surplus food donations they receive. Upon completion of the training course, funding from the Partnership will be used to purchase the cooking equipment necessary for the groups to cook for their community.

Connections metrics

Throughout 2025, we began embedding metrics to define the connections we make between people. As we seek to make certain that our approach consistently aligns with our Purpose of ‘working in Partnership for a happier world’, we’re evolving how we measure the impact of our work.

Developing unifying metrics for social impact takes time, but we’re seeking ways to quantify the connections we create within and between communities. We’re working closely with our partners to develop measurement frameworks that support our approach.

Challenges

An ever-increasing number of extremely worthy causes in our local and global communities means that demand for support through donations is at an all-time high, significantly outstripping our current capacity to assist. Therefore, it remains a core challenge for us to continue investing our efforts and finances strategically through charitable giving as we deliver our vision for a happier world.

A critical aspect of this work is ensuring our contributions create tangible, impactful value within the communities we serve. This focus requires us to make balanced choices concerning the scope of our impact at local, national and international levels. We remain committed to keeping Partners, customers and communities at the heart of our work.

Looking forward

We’re keeping customers and Partners at the heart of our community giving through programmes like Community Matters, which support local charities and grassroots causes. The Golden Jubilee Trust continues to offer Partners the opportunity to donate their time and skills to charities across the UK, creating lasting impact. These initiatives help strengthen our connection with communities and reflect our commitment to making a positive difference.

Expand Progress

We’re building on our key charity partnerships whilst also enabling customers and Partners to have a greater voice in which local causes we support.

We’ll work with our national charity partners to review and develop our initiatives, particularly newer ones, such as our Community Cooks programme with FareShare and workshops with Look Good Feel Better, as well as supporting a new programme with the Royal Countryside Fund.

Keeping customers and Partners actively engaged with our community-giving activity remains a key driving force. One of the ways we’re doing this is through our Community Matters programme, where the Partnership makes financial donations to local charities, community groups and grassroots good causes. Having reinstated green tokens this year in core Waitrose shops, customer voting is back at the heart of social impact in our communities, creating and reinforcing important local connections. We’re excited to explore how Community Matters will come to life for John Lewis customers in the near future.

A Foundation for the future

Case Study

Expand

February 2024 saw the launch of the new John Lewis Partnership Foundation, our bigger, bolder charity bringing more causes under a single umbrella. With three funds focused on helping nature, employability and people with care experience to flourish, our rebooted Foundation supports projects all over the world.

We’ve been operating charitable grant-giving to care for community wellbeing and the natural world since the 1960s. But in 2024, we stepped things up, uniting three key areas under the John Lewis Partnership Foundation.

Building Happier Futures aligns with the Partnership’s commitment to be the employer of choice for care-experienced people, while the Nature Fund provides grants to protect and restore the natural world in a socially just way.

Meanwhile, the Employability Fund supports the education and upskilling of vulnerable young people, building long-term relationships with 33 expert organisations, including WasteAid. Funded since 2023, the charity works to create sustainable livelihoods for youth in rural South Africa who work in the informal waste recycling sector. Funding from the John Lewis Partnership Foundation has enabled WasteAid to expand their First Step Recovery programme to two new communities in Mpumalanga, providing training, mentorship, resources and an enabling environment to transform waste into a valuable resource for income generation.

By providing training in waste and business management, we’re empowering people to boost their own incomes. Zanele, the leader of a newly registered business reflects, “I’ve increased my income from 2,000 rand to almost 10,000 rand per month. Now we’re officially registered, we can apply for funding from the municipality. My wish is to open a buyback centre to grow my business and create more jobs.”

Zanele’s business group has achieved a 460% increase in its income and has secured business agreements with a local guest house and taverns. Another group saw a 395% income boost and formally registered as a cooperative.

A total of 80 waste collectors have completed the ‘wastepreneur’ training, covering waste management, business and financial literacy, cooperatives and self-development themes.

“With nearly 45% of youth unemployed in Mpumalanga, many turn to informal waste collection from unsafe dump sites. With generous support from the John Lewis Partnership Foundation, since December 2023, we’ve empowered 100 young waste reclaimers and artisans, providing essential training, mentorship and resources to turn waste into a valuable source of income.” Ceris Turner-Bailes, Chief Executive, WasteAid

Green tokens return to shops

Case Study

Expand

October 2025 saw the return of Community Matters green tokens into our larger Waitrose shops, followed by a new platform for Partners and charities to better handle vital due diligence and donations.

Welcoming green tokens back to our larger shops puts customers at the heart of our local giving. Through Waitrose Community Matters, customers nominate local, charitable organisations to receive a share of £3,000 each quarter and vote with their green token when they visit us in store. To date, Community Matters has donated over £50m to good causes across the country. Back in 2008, it was the first scheme of its kind to be introduced by a supermarket.

With the reintroduction of tokens, we’re increasing the donation cycles from three to four per year, meaning we can help more local causes. At the end of the cycle, the project with the most votes will receive £1,500, with £1,000 and £500 going to the causes in second and third. We’re also doubling the donations from Waitrose convenience stores to match core shops, increasing the overall impact.

Our newly designed tokens are made from recycled nylon, supported by fresh in-store branding and voting units. We’ve also refocussed on the causes we promote to put food in the spotlight, with at least one of the three available causes in each three-month round connected to food. Many of the charities will help tackle hunger, bring people together, empower healthier lifestyles and create a more sustainable food system for future generations.

Our customers have used their tokens to benefit many valuable causes since the programme relaunched, including:

Compassionate Kenilworth, a charity that strives to reduce social isolation and support vulnerable residents. It runs a bereavement café and provides breakfast at Kenilworth Secondary School for children who arrive hungry;

Alzheimer’s Dementia Support, which hosts connection cafés, singing for pleasure and tea dances in the Maidenhead area;

Streetlytes, a charity supporting the homeless and vulnerable across West London. Every Monday they open their doors to over 100 guests for an evening of hot food, practical support and friendship.

“A big thank you to Waitrose for the continued support in these increasingly difficult times. The high quality products we receive make a huge difference to our service, enabling us to produce a 3-course meal every week for homeless and vulnerable people in West London. Adding Waitrose premium ingredients to our cooking, or giving extras to guests in bags to take away is a real bonus. The Streetlytes team, volunteers and guests are extremely grateful for the help and generosity that Waitrose provides.” Susanna Modaresi, Project Coordinator, Streetlytes