Community investment guidelines

We are pleased to support a wide variety of charities and not-for-profit organisations around the world, in order to invest in the communities in which our employees live.

The following guidelines for these donations apply throughout the Group. To administer them we have five Regional Community Investment Committees who apply the following criteria and decide whether or not to make donations from their budgetary allocations.

The criteria on which funds are allocated are:

• We will not make political donations.
• We will give preference to charities or not-for-profit organisations operating in the geographical areas of our own operations, thus benefiting the communities in which our employees live.
• We will give preference to charities in which our employees are actively involved; in particular, we prefer to match funds raised by employees' own activities.
• We will give preference to officially recognised or registered charities.
• Qualifying donations will be supported on merit, subject to budgetary considerations. We will not seek publicity for the individual donations we make; however, we will account for donations by broad category only. We may agree to the use of the company name on occasions where it may increase the opportunity for the charity, or not-for-profit organisation, to generate additional contributions. We would like to publicise success stories internally, or on our web site – in such cases text would be agreed in advance by both parties.
• We will not fund projects if we feel it might be potentially disadvantageous to the Group, or to the charity or not-for-profit organisation concerned. Since we cannot support all appeals, we will not normally give financial support to individuals, research projects, expeditions or trips. We do not use our community investment for advertising purposes or for promoting our products. Charities and not-for-profit organisations receiving substantial funds from governments will be given a lower priority.

We support a limited number of large international partnerships. Proposals for such projects should address issues of international concern. Prospective funding partners must be willing to communicate regularly, and work closely with our employees. Our aim is to work together to maximise community benefit. Funding decisions are taken after careful consideration and discussion by our International Community Investment Committee.

How do you apply for support?

We prefer to support charities and not-for-profit organisations which our employees already support by their own activities. Our own employees can apply for support through the company Intranet.

If you wish to enter into a partnership with us at a regional or international level please complete the online form. If you have any supporting documentation, leaflets or other information about the organisation on whose behalf you are seeking our assistance, please make a note of this on your application form so you may be contacted with details of where to send the material.