Strategic philanthropy and volunteering

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Supporting our communities

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 encourage all of our colleagues to use their six days (42 hours) of volunteering time. Colleagues can take part in centrally organised programmes such as supporting a school as part of one of our education programmes or one of the charities our local offices support, 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, Marie Curie.

Our national charity partnership with Marie Curie

In 2021, our colleagues selected Marie Curie as KPMG’s National Charity partner, initially until October 2023. In recognition of the current cost of living crisis, and the potential impact of this on the support Marie Curie receives, we have taken the decision to extend the partnership by a year, enabling us to provide additional support and stability for the charity through these challenging times. We support Marie Curie through fundraising, volunteering, pro bono and thought leadership programmes.

Value of support provided to Marie Curie / £484,653 FY22

Number of colleagues who’ve given their time to support Marie Curie / 3,278 FY22

We’re delighted to be supporting Marie Curie and their mission to ensure that everyone with a terminal illness, no matter who they are or where they live, has the care and support they need; whether that’s dementia, cancer, heart disease or any other terminal condition. It’s a cause that has clearly really resonated with our colleagues.
Rachel Hopcroft CBE / Head of Corporate Affairs, KPMG in the UK

Matthew Reed, Chief Executive Marie Curie

Fundraising

Every pound raised will support families across the UK affected by terminal illness, providing expert care, guidance and support at one of the most critical times in their lives.

Funds raised and
donated / £440,849 From Nov 2021 - Sept 2022

Number of nursing care hours our funds raised could help to support / 22,042 Based on funds raised Nov 2021 -
Sept 2022

The KPMG Big Walks 2022

The KPMG Big Walks 2022 raised over £222,000 for Marie Curie! This could help Marie Curie deliver 11,100 hours of expert nursing care, which is 3,600 hours more than our initial target.

“We are so proud of our partnership with KPMG and all it has achieved so far. We knew the Big Walks would be our biggest fundraising activity together, but I am absolutely delighted that we have far exceeded our target of £150,000, thanks to the engagement and passion of our KPMG colleagues for our partnership and for Marie Curie’s cause.”

Matthew Reed / Chief Executive at Marie Curie

8 walks from June 16 to July 11, from Aberdeen to Bath.
£222,000 raised though the walks (£150,000 target)
46,000km walked!

Pro bono

We support our colleagues in using their professional skills and expertise to deliver transformational pro bono projects for Marie Curie in order to support them in their mission to address the inequality of end of life care and ensure a better end of life experience for all.

Designing national solutions

The KPMG Ignition and Healthcare consulting teams are leading on pro bono support for Marie Curie. Through a two-day workshop, the team came together with Marie Curie and other health partners to design national solutions to the challenges posed by end of life care. 

The event drew on the local experience of the Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care System to bring real issues facing families within the health and social care sector to life and provide a focus on how care could be transformed in the future. 

A series of activities and interactive discussions helped attendees understand the challenges a patient experiences and identify ideas to help improve end of life care from the point of contact. 

The session developed several ideas for improving the end of life experience for patients and how future care systems could be improved. These proposals will be developed over the course of the partnerships with the aim to pilot and implement them through care systems in the near future.  

Volunteering

Whether our colleagues have a minute to sign a petition, an hour to thank a Marie Curie Nurse or a day or more to use their skills to help the charity tackle urgent business needs, we provide volunteering opportunities for everyone to be able to support Marie Curie.

Top of the Shops

Top of the Shops is our firm-wide volunteering opportunity where colleagues get into teams and takeover a Marie Curie charity shop for a day. Teams will compete across the year to raise the most money through till sales and top the charts!

“It was an amazing and insightful day into how much time, effort and love goes into running Marie Curie shops all across the UK. We took part in various tasks from sorting the charity bags which came through the door and working on the tills to tidying up the shop floor and dressing the mannequins.”

Amy Greenstein / Assistant Manager, KPMG in the UK

Thought Leadership

We aim to use the collective voice and skills of KPMG and Marie Curie to ensure that current end of life care, services and support networks reach the highest standards.

An example of this is a piece of work we’re conducting which explores the cost of energy for households across the UK with a terminally ill person. We want to understand the opportunities and gaps that exist and identify any initiatives which could help households with a terminally ill member manage their energy costs.

Governance for Better

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. In recent years, our Governance for Better programme has been developed even further to enhance the support we have given to these colleagues since the start of the pandemic. We recognise how valuable our colleagues have been in helping schools, colleges and charities to come back stronger. The enhanced programme features a series of webinars from industry experts, information and recruitment sessions for those considering taking on such a role, peer to peer networking events, in addition to latest news, support and guidance.

Using our expertise in the community

School governors volunteer at board-level to set the strategic vision for the school, provide challenge and support, and oversee finances. It’s a fantastic opportunity to have a real impact in the community while gaining skills to bring back into the workplace. Our school governor volunteers are involved in budget management, health and safety and data analysis. They help ensure a wide curriculum is delivered so every child has the opportunity to thrive.

“I wanted to volunteer in something that was different to my day job, but something that would use my skills. I’m Vice-Chair at a local primary school and feel like I’m able to make a difference while continuing to learn and develop myself.”

Will Bellamy / Apprentice, KPMG in the UK

Supporting emergency appeals

We respond to global emergencies via immediate fundraising appeals, which the firm and colleagues contribute to.

£85,000 towards flood relief in Pakistan via the British Redd Cross

£140,000 to UNICEF’s Ukraine Emergency Appeal.

£123,000 towards the British Red Cross’s Syria & Turkey Earthquake Appeal

Ukraine crisis support

KPMG was part of a response to the Ukrainian crisis in Scotland, alongside other partners, working with the City of Edinburgh Council. They needed support to help them work through some of the challenges they would face with an increased number of refugees arriving into Edinburgh.

Drawing on the experience of the team who had supported the Scottish Government through the COVID-19 pandemic, we were able to help the Council manage a complex situation and tackle uncertainty.

We focussed on the refugees arriving, keeping in mind their journey so far, working through various scenarios so we could test, challenge and improve their experience. By mobilising and bringing together the various stakeholders involved, we helped identify short and longer-term actions that the teams running the services in Edinburgh were able to implement.

“The whole team gained a huge amount of satisfaction for the small part they played in this hugely important response.”

David Grimson / Director, KPMG in the UK

KPMG Foundation

The KPMG Foundation works with others to improve the lives of the most vulnerable children and young people in the UK, so they are safe, healthy, happy and learning.

The KPMG Foundation, created in 2000, is an independent charity supported by KPMG. It shares a passion for promoting social mobility and achieving long-term change, wherever possible.

The Foundation makes grants to selected partners to improve the life chances of some of the UK’s most vulnerable children and young people. Current priorities are care experienced children, and the early years.

The charity invests in:

new ideas or organisations: START UP
work with emerging evidence, to help sustain or scale: STEP UP
collaborations for influencing policy and systems change: STEP TOGETHER
filling gaps in knowledge, where findings can be put into practice: ACTIONABLE RESEARCH

The charity’s trustees make decisions about where the Foundation can add most value, drawing on their personal and professional experience in KPMG, in academia and from working with communities, families, children and young people.

Find out more about KPMG Foundation

Helping children in care achieve a better outcome

The recent Independent Review of Children’s Social Care¹ stated that in ten years, without dramatic reform, outcomes for too many children and families will remain stubbornly poor. There are nearly 100,000 children in a flawed care system, costing over £15bn per year.

The KPMG Foundation is supporting a variety of work to help children in care achieve better outcomes as well as investigating whether there is anything it can do to prevent children from entering the care system in the first place.

The Fostering Network recently published timely research into the retention and recruitment of foster carers in England. It looked at how to achieve a more diverse and stable foster care workforce in England, supported by the KPMG Foundation (https://kpmgfoundation.org.uk/) and conducted by the Centre for Evidence and Implementation (CEI) - https://www.ceiglobal.org/

As well as supporting a number of initiatives to improve fostering, we are also working to raise the status of kinship care, where a child lives with a relative or friend. Supporting the adults who provide a stable, loving home is a vital route to ensuring children are safer, healthier, happier and learning.

Ensuring sufficient numbers of skilled and knowledgeable foster carers is one of the biggest challenges currently facing the fostering sector. This research explores what works to retain foster carers – ultimately so we are able to meet all the needs of children in care, both now and in the future.

Read the summary report here.

We helped amplify the findings of this research, and the importance of fostering, at an event earlier this year, alongside the John Lewis Partnership

The Foundation was delighted to work with the KPMG Family Network and the Corporate Responsibility Team, to help make KPMG a Fostering Friendly Employer.

¹⁾ childrenssocialcare.independent-review.uk

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