The cost-of-living crisis is affecting the most disadvantaged groups across all our communities, and it is having an especially significant impact on the charity sector.
As part of our values, we have a responsibility to the communities we serve. We’re proud of the support our people give to help our communities and we offer all of our colleagues up to six days of volunteering time. Colleagues can take part in centrally organised programmes such as supporting a school or local charity, becoming a Charity Trustee or School Governor, or they can support a cause they are personally passionate about through a self-organised activity. Many colleagues also choose to volunteer for our national charity.
Our National Charity Partnership with FareShare
In April 2024, we opened applications in search of our next National Charity Partner. Following a rigorous shortlisting process, we gave colleagues the opportunity to vote and the winner was FareShare. FareShare is the UK’s largest charity tackling the environmental problem of food waste for social good. They save food which would otherwise go to waste and redistribute it to local communities through a network of 35 regional sites across the UK.
FareShare provides surplus food to over 8,000 charities and community groups, who transform this food into parcels and meals to feed nearly one million people. These organisations also offer holistic support services aimed at addressing the causes of food poverty, helping people overcome mental health challenges, domestic abuse situations, unemployment and more.
For every £1 we raise through our partnership, FareShare will be able to redistribute the equivalent of five meals to those who need it most.
Our new National Charity Partnership with FareShare launched in October 2024 and will run until September 2027.
We’re really proud that in the first year alone, we provided £748,232 worth of support for FareShare, including £481,392 in fundraising and donations (enough to provide 2.4 million meals for those who need them most), and £266,840 worth of pro bono.
Towards the end of our first year of partnership, FareShare announced they would be merging with their London network partner The Felix Project, so we look forward to our partnership continuing with the newly merged charity in 2026 and beyond.
Fundraising
The 2025 KPMG Big Walks for FareShare
The Big Walk event series is KPMG’s annual flagship fundraiser, involving thousands of colleagues walking in a scenic area of the UK to raise money and awareness for our National Charity Partner.
The Big Walks have been a fundamental aspect of our National Charity programme for last 5 years, serving as a unique opportunity for the whole firm to come together in support of colleagues’ chosen cause.
The events offer fundraising for our national charity, as well as wellbeing, cross office/regional reconnection, departmental team-building, social and community benefits that encapsulate the firm’s values of Together and For Better.
We were delighted that in 2025, 4500+ colleagues signed up to take part in our Big Walks series across the UK, raising £252,000 for FareShare.
The KPMG Big Walks also won the 2025 Better Society Award for Best Scheme to Encourage Staff Fundraising.
Volunteering
Across the first year of our partnership, 5720 colleagues were involved in activity with FareShare, collectively volunteering over 31,400 hours of their time. As a result of incredible demand from the firm, 1450 warehouse volunteering shifts were offered to colleagues, 145% of our initial target. In total, colleagues contributed over 8400 hours to volunteering at FareShare warehouses. 700 colleagues volunteered to assemble food parcels, which were then distributed to FareShare’s local food charities.
KPMG Audit Executive Leadership Team volunteering to support FareShare/The Felix Project
In April 2025, Cath Burnet and our Audit Executive Leadership Team took a day out of their busy schedules to volunteer at the Felix Project warehouse in Poplar, close to our Canary Wharf office.
Pro bono
Our National Charity programme always goes beyond fundraising and volunteer support. We also support our colleagues to use their professional skills and expertise to help bring FareShare closer to achieving their strategic objective of ensuring no good food goes to waste.
In year one alone, we have provided over £266,000 worth of pro bono support on a range of projects including: a KPMG Ignition session focused on operational excellence, financial resilience and income generation for the FareShare network; design and implementation of a new financial and performance management reporting framework including development of a data model and dashboard; and a technology assessment and prioritised roadmap for FareShare’s various tech platforms.
KPMG Ignition for FareShare and Network Partners
To kick off the FareShare partnership, various teams across KPMG came together to deliver a dynamic and engaging Ignition event, bringing together 38 participants from across the national FareShare network. The day was designed to help FareShare reflect on their collective mission as FareShare network partners and align on what good looks like, whilst exploring key market trends that challenge the mission. The day supported them to focus in on key topics that will enable the network to improve how it works together to deliver the collective mission in a more operationally efficient and sustainable way going forwards.
Convening and Collaborating
Throughout year one of the FareShare partnership, we have aimed to use as many platforms as possible to raise FareShare’s profile and amplify their voice and mission.
This has included featuring them in our Customer Excellence Report, Global Food Resilience Report and the partnership being profiled at events such as the Food and Drink Federation Awards and MCA Awards.
MCA Award win for KPMG Pro bono
We are delighted that one of our pro bono projects for former National Charity Partner, Marie Curie was recognised as the 2025 MCA Award Winner for Social Value.
As part of our commitment to Marie Curie while they were our National Charity Partner, we worked pro bono with them to survey 42 Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and understand their challenges and opportunities related to Palliative End of Life Care (PEoLC). The survey uncovered some important findings. Just 35% of systems said they had a good understanding of their population’s health needs. Only 3% had properly assessed the required workforce to deliver services effectively. Yet the big takeaway from our discussions was that the ICBs needed a way to quantify the value of their programmes to better support prioritisation and investment decisions, so we created a practical and flexible toolkit to help PEoLC services quantify their value and build their business case. Having helped create a toolkit, we volunteered to work with one leading ICB to look at a range of options for how they could improve 24/7 access to essential PEoLC services. Then we helped them make an informed decision and put them on the path to executing their strategy. We demonstrated how their strategy could save them more than £100m over 20 years while vastly improving patient care.
Governance for Better
School Governors
At KPMG, we have long been encouraging all our colleagues, irrespective of grade, to take up governance volunteering roles such as charity trustees and school governors through our Governance for Better programme, because we recognise the value that all KPMG colleagues can bring to these roles, and similarly, the value they can all get out.
For the second year in a row, we have topped the leader board of Governors for Schools’ corporate partners, placing the highest number of colleagues onto school boards. Colleagues across the firm are highly prized by the schools who are looking for vacancies, due to their depth of skills and experience. KPMG School Governors bring a plethora of skills to the sector: 81% of volunteers appointed this year had an extensive or moderate background in Finance; 72% brought strong experience of strategic leadership; and 66% can provide schools with strong risk & compliance knowledge.
Furthermore, 61% of KPMG appointments came from a global majority background, hugely above the national average for the governance sector where just 7% of governors and trustees identify as being from a minority ethnic background. We are also placing younger people in governance roles. 91% of volunteers placed in schools are under the age of 44 – with 70% of all volunteers being 34 or younger. Fewer than 1% of governors nationally are aged 30 or under, and only 8% under the age of 40.
Charity Trustees
The Governance for Better programme at KPMG also supports colleagues in Charity Trustee roles, enabling them to share their skills and expertise with charities and drive meaningful change in their local communities and beyond.
Through this role, colleagues develop and strengthen leadership, governance and professional skills while helping charities deliver impactful programmes that tackle disadvantage and promote social mobility. Colleagues therefore also come away with a sense of pride and purpose.
Volunteering and Fundraising through our KPMG Colleagues
KPMG Network of Women host school visits
KPMG Network of Women (KNOW), our gender equity network, advances equality between men and women by supporting and empowering women to reach their full potential through personal and professional development, regardless of grade, function or role.
Over the years, KNOW has supported various charities and in 2025, KNOW Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham hosted 325 students for Opening Doors to Opportunities, an initiative where we welcome students into our offices and help young people develop their skills.
Fundraising for The Royal British Legion and Poppy Scotland
In 2025, KPMG colleagues supported The Royal British Legion with their fundraising efforts on the lead up to Remembrance Day, raising crucial funds to support our Armed Forces serving personnel, veterans, and their families.
Members of the Forces in the Firm Network volunteered to sell poppies and raised nearly £5,000.
Alongside the Network's fundraising and the two-minute silence, the London office turned red during London Poppy Day to show our support.
KPMG Foundation
The KPMG Foundation is an independent grant-making charity supported by KPMG that exists to transform the life chances of the UK’s most vulnerable children and young people.
The Foundation was established in 2000 and invests in high-potential organisations and programmes using a targeted, evidence-informed approach that embraces innovation, scale and influence:
The Foundation’s current priority areas focus on the earliest and most formative stages of childhood and on young people who have experienced instability or disruption in their lives:
By combining strategic funding, collaboration and learning, the Foundation aims to create lasting change.
The KPMG Foundation charity partners include a number working with parents and families with young children in disadvantaged communities. For example, find out more below about:
WILD Young Parents Project | Young dads |
Young mums | Young parents | Cornwall
Welcome to Thrive at Five - Together we can raise every child to thrive
Happy Baby Community
Supporting care-experienced young people to thrive
The KPMG Foundation is committed to improving outcomes for care-experienced children and young people, recognising the significant barriers they face in stability, education and access to opportunity. The Foundation has invested in organisations that strengthen relationships, resilience and progression into adulthood. Our investment in Kinship strengthens support for relatives and friends who step in to care for children, helping sustain family placements and reduce disruption.
We have supported Now Foster to scale innovative recruitment and engagement approaches that bring new foster carers into the system. While our funding for the Family Rights Group’s Lifelong Links programme rebuilds trusted networks around young people leaving care to improve emotional wellbeing and long-term stability.
Kinship - For family or friends who step up to raise a child
Now Foster - Fostering Reimagined
Family Rights Group - Helping Families Helping Children
Focusing on a child's early years as the foundation for
good development
Giving every child the best start in life
The KPMG Foundation focuses on the early years as the cornerstone for healthy development, recognising that the first five years shape children’s long-term wellbeing, learning and life chances.
Through long-term, evidence-informed partnerships, the Foundation invests in organisations that strengthen early relationships, parental confidence and access to high-quality early support, particularly for families facing disadvantage. Our support for Thrive at Five helps scale place-based approaches that improve school readiness and early language development through coordinated local systems.
We have helped Wild Young Parents Project provide targeted, trauma-informed support to young parents, strengthening attachment, stability and positive early parenting. While investing in the Happy Baby Community builds peer networks and trusted support for new parents, reducing isolation and promoting early bonding and infant wellbeing.
We know that KPMG colleagues are interested and concerned by these issues, as evidenced by their support for FareShare.
