Corporate Citizenship

We are privileged to work with some of Ireland’s most dedicated charities, helping to make a difference to those who need it most. Supporting these efforts to make a difference are some inspiring figures, from in-kind donations in 2022 €1,085,927 to cash donations of over €714,321 and employee fundraising of over €261,740.

This financial support is backed up by the passion and hard work of our volunteers who last year dedicated 18,543 staff hours to our volunteer programmes.

Our firm-wide charity donations scheme supports a variety of charities and causes. Here is an insight to some of our activities and the charities that we work with.

KPMG Ireland established the Denis O'Connor Walking Festival to commemorate our late Managing Partner and raise much-needed funds for a range of good causes, the walk has evolved over the years and is now knows as the KPMG Charity Hike. Cystic Fibrosis Ireland was last year's beneficiary and previous benefiting charities include ALONE, the Temple Street Foundation, Hospice Foundation, Focus Ireland, Debra Ireland, Pieta House and many more.

Each year our people generously contribute thousands of shoeboxes filled with toys for Team Hope Christmas Shoebox Appeal. Last year, our people donated over 1,000 shoeboxes which were delivered straight into the hands of children affected by poverty in Africa and Eastern Europe.

We’re proud to support St. Michael’s House as the main sponsor of their corporate volunteer programme. St. Michael’s House provides a comprehensive range of services and supports to help people with intellectual disabilities and their families in the greater Dublin Area. Each year, hundreds of our people volunteer with the charity to help make a difference in our local community and create awareness around disability. 

If a colleague is fundraising for a charity, KPMG will make a donation to their dedicated cause once you’ve completed the fundraiser. 

Giving back to the communities in which we operate is an important part of what we do. KPMG people work with individuals and community groups to help make these areas a better place to live. Read about some of our flagship community projects below. 

We run an annual competition for colleagues called Project Bright where we invite our people to come up with bright ideas to help address local, social and environmental issues that we then go on and implement. Winning projects include maths programmes for disadvantaged students, teenage entrepreneurial projects, music programmes with disabled children and the KPMG LEGO Club. 

Through Project Bright, we asked our staff to come up with innovative ways to help benefit our local communities. The winning idea focused on implementing a recurring LEGO® after-school activity for children within the North-East Inner City (NEIC).

The key aim of this initiative is to promote equal equity of outcome amongst all children regardless of background or circumstance via local enrichment programmes.

Visit our KPMG LEGO® Club page

We support Boardmatch by helping strengthen boards and management committees in the not-for-profit sector. KPMG people work with diverse organisations including YMCA, Alone and the Marie Keating Foundation. In the past five years, we placed 32 KPMG people on not-for-profit boards.

Teams across KPMG enjoy giving back to the community by taking part in department volunteer days. Each year, hundreds of volunteers get involved in gardening and outdoor work at St. Michael’s House, beach clean-ups with An Taisce and Flossie and the beach cleaners, cooking for families at Ronald McDonald House and ad-hoc painting and gardening work with local schools and organisations. 

KPMG does a significant amount of pro-bono and lo-bono work, valued at nearly €1 million in 2022.

Our Old Folks Christmas party is a long-standing tradition at our Stokes Place offices. Each December, we welcome nearly 100 of our older neighbours to our premises for a festive party with 30 KPMG people volunteering to help, serve, chat and dance with our guests on the evening.

During the pandemic, we set up a pen pal initiative called ‘All Write Together’ which saw KPMG volunteers brightening up the days of the same group of elderly through hand-written letters to let them know that we were thinking of them at this difficult and lonely time. 

Our people have volunteered with Business in the Community’s EPIC programme since 2011. The initiative helps people from immigrant communities find employment in their area of expertise in Ireland through one-to-one mentoring. We’re further partnering with Business in the Community Ireland to provide short buddying sessions for jobseekers. These sessions include CV advice, interview practice and career guidance to equip people with the skills and confidence they need to gain employment in a highly challenging climate.

KPMG Ireland has announced its commitment to be a net-zero carbon organisation by 2030, as part of its continued focus on supporting sustainable growth and innovative climate solutions for Irish business.

To underpin this goal, Ireland’s largest professional services firm is committing to a robust ‘science-based’ approach, in line with what the latest climate science deems necessary to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and the 1.5°C Pathway.

The targets, which have been approved by an independent third party, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), will see the firm commit to reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2030, and to reduce scope 3 emissions by 30% over the same timeframe*. The firm has also committed to reducing any residual emissions through independently verified carbon offset and removal initiatives verified by decarbonisation experts from its Sustainable Futures division.

Key to achieving these emissions reductions are actions such as reducing the firm’s reliance on fossil fuels, embedding best available technologies to increase building efficiencies (Scope 1), as well as increased use of renewable energy sources (Scope 2). To address indirect emissions that occur in its value chain (Scope 3), the firm will work with suppliers to ensure their sustainability ambitions align with its commitment to achieve carbon reductions.

To ensure that KPMG Ireland’s climate actions are creating a measurable impact, the firm will track progress against its commitments through regular reporting to the SBTi. The Irish firm is just one of 17 companies in Ireland to date that have actual science based targets approved by the SBTi.

The latest science based targets announced by KPMG build on the firm’s demonstrated commitment to the sustainability agenda having successfully reduced its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 50% to date. Over the last 10 years, KPMG has substantially increased its employee numbers while succeeding to reduce its net carbon emissions per full time employee by more than 50%.

The firm will build on this progress to increase its focus on tackling Scope 3 emissions, which include purchased goods and services, business travel, employee commuting, waste disposal, investments, working with like-minded suppliers and other activities in its supply chain.

KPMG Ireland Managing Partner Seamus Hand said: “Businesses are increasingly recognising the urgency of the climate crisis, and the importance of aligning their operations with a net zero trajectory.  Large organisations in particular have an obligation to lead by example and I’m really proud to commit our firm to the Science Based Targets initiative, an independently verified pathway to becoming a net-zero carbon organisation by 2030.”

“Alongside making our own climate commitments, we have also invested significantly in establishing Ireland’s leading sustainability and climate change advisory practice, KPMG Sustainable Futures, to assist our clients navigate and implement their own response to the fast-evolving agenda”.

At KPMG, we believe in the power of people to do great things. Education is one of the key pillars of our Corporate Citizenship strategy and we believe it is paramount to developing a society for future success.

Our Corporate Citizenship programme creates opportunities for all our people to make a difference. The focus in KPMG is on skills-based volunteering, using the talent and training of our staff to help make a positive difference especially in education. Find out below how we are making a difference. 

We understand that books can open up new worlds, and instil in children a lifelong love for learning, but often those new worlds and that love of learning are not accessible to all children. We’re proud to sponsor the KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Awards and as part of our partnership we run a number of exciting projects help address childhood literacy including our Gift a Book campaign which saw KPMG team up with Children’s Books Ireland and the Arts Council to donate 6,000 Irish books to young people in centres of direct provision, hospitals and homeless services across the country. 

We partnered with Children’s Books Ireland in 2019 to support their BOLD GIRLS initiative. BOLD GIRLS workshops aim to break down societal barriers and instil confidence in girls by showing them female characters in children’s books with passion, power and opinions. KPMG volunteers host creative, innovative workshops in primary schools based on women who changed history, in turn encouraging young girls to achieve their ambitions. Last year, we rolled out a new initiative, BOLD GIRLS programme, BOLD GIRLS meets 20x20 where we introduced children’s books that highlight women in sport to classrooms across Ireland. 

Time to Read is a programme we run with Business in the Community Ireland and local Primary Schools. KPMG volunteers provide one-to-one reading support to pupils from second class. Each child receives reading support once per week for 30 minutes over a 20-week period. The benefits of the programme include an increased enjoyment of reading, improved fluency and comprehension as well as greater confidence and self-discovery in reading. 

KPMG run a Time to Count programme with Business in the Community Ireland and St. Vincent’s Girl’s National School. The aim of the programme is to promote the learning of maths through fun, educational games. Our volunteers meet third class primary pupils once a week for 6 weeks. The programme promotes the enjoyment of mathematics and children begin to see maths skills not as a chore but as a fun activity supported by a volunteer. 

Enactus is an international non-profit organisation supported by KPMG in over 35 countries including Ireland. Enactus works with business leaders and higher education to mobilise university students to make a positive difference in their communities while developing the skills to become socially responsible business leaders. The culmination of each year's activity is a national competition whereby the winning team represents Ireland at the Enactus World Cup.

Each year KPMG people volunteer to mentor students at CBS Westland Row, during their 5th and 6th year of study. The purpose of the programme is to encourage students to remain in school and complete their Leaving Certificate. The mentor works with the mentee to set life goals, look at how they might achieve these goals and identify some milestones to measure their success.  Mentors meet with their student once per academic month and there are numerous social and team building activities over the year also. 

In 2017, Larkin College in Dublin City Centre introduced Accountancy for the Leaving Certificate and asked KPMG to support their fifth-year students with the subject. The aim of the programme is to give Leaving Certificate Accounting students the opportunity to work through difficult questions with the help of an experienced accountant. KPMG volunteers work with groups of 2-3 students in one-hour sessions over a 6-week period. 

In 2017, KPMG started working with the National College of Ireland on their early learning initiative, Doodle Den, an evidence-informed after-school programme which aims to address literacy needs amongst senior infants. KPMG people volunteer in numerous Dublin City schools to support children’s literacy development and encourage their interest in reading.

Junior Achievement Ireland (JAI) encourages young people to remain in education and helps them develop the skills they need to succeed in a changing world. Every year, our volunteers are placed in schools in Dublin, Cork and Belfast to implement these practical programmes. 

Through Project Bright, we asked our staff to come up with innovative ways to help benefit our local communities. The winning idea focused on implementing a recurring LEGO® after-school activity for children within the North-East Inner City (NEIC).

The key aim of this initiative is to promote equal equity of outcome amongst all children regardless of background or circumstance via local enrichment programmes.

Visit our KPMG LEGO® Club page

At KPMG, we want to help disadvantaged students fulfil their potential. We fund and support different programmes and scholarships in a bid to achieve this. 

• The Denis O’Connor KPMG Doctoral Scholarship in Accounting is a partnership with the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School and celebrates the leadership of the late Denis O'Connor - former Managing Partner of KPMG in Ireland. 
• We are active supporters of the Trinity Access Programme which supports people from areas with low progression rates to higher education to reach their full educational potential
• We also help fund a scholarship for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to attend Belvedere College and Gonzaga College.